UC-NRLF 


i 


?5lB^^Siii: 
EX  L1BRIS 


THOMAS  ALVA  EDISON— 1922 


Forty  Years 

of  Edison  Service 

1882-1922 

Outlining  the  growth  and  development  of  the 
Edison  System  in  New  York  City 


Press  of 

The  New  York  Edison  Company 
1922 


TY<      s 


Copyright  1922,  by 
THE  NEW  YORK  EDISON  COMPANY 


The  March  banks  Press,  New  York 


OUR  AUTHOR 

An  Appreciation 

WE  have  been  very  fortunate  in  securing,  for  the  prepa- 
ration of  this  volume,  the  service  of  one  who  has  been 
closely  identified  with  the  electrical  growth  of  the  past  forty 
years;  one  who  is,  of  all,  best  acquainted  with  the  life  work 
of  the  great  inventor;  one  who  has  contributed  in  no  small 
measure  to  the  development  of  the  industry  through  his  un- 
tiring effort,  the  clearness  and  breadth  of  his  vision  and  the 
agency  of  his  gifted  pen. 

In  reviewing  the  history  of  these  forty  years,  the  purpose 
has  been  not  to  present  an  engineering  or  technical  review, 
but  rather  to  record  some  reminiscences  and  portray  the 
progress  of  the  period  largely  from  the  human  standpoint, 
indicating  how — as  opportunity  has  arisen — Edison's  earliest 
achievements  have  grown,  and  adapted  themselves  to  the 
ever-increasing  demands  of  an  appreciaf'-  public. 

The  author  brings  into  this  volume  so  much  of  his  enthusi- 
astic admiration  for  the  master  mind  of  our  industry  and  his 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  subject,  that  our  own  part 
of  the  undertaking  has  been  of  the  lightest  nature.  In  this 
tribute  to  the  great  accomplishments  of  Edison  in  the  Cen- 
tral Station  field  we  add  our  appreciation  and  sense  of  obliga- 
tion to  the  writer  of  this  volume — Mr  T  Commerford  Martin. 

The  New  York  Edison  Company 


M129868 


Table  of  Contents 

PAGE 

i     Invention  of  the  Edison  Lamp  and  Central  Sta- 
tion Lighting  System 3 

ii     Early  Demonstrations  of  the  Edison  System     .      19 
in     Formation  of  the  First  New  York  Edison  Com- 
pany        31 

iv     The  First  Edison  Central  Station — Pearl  Street, 

New  York 43 

v     Introduction  of  the  Edison  Service — Early  Cus- 
tomers     59 

vi     General  Service  Growth  of  The  New  York  Edi- 
son Company 73 

vn     The  Successive  Edison  Stations  on  Manhattan 

Island 83 

vin     Expansion  of  the  Edison  Network  and  Details  of 

the  Underground  System 95 

ix     Some  Chief  Engineering  Features  of  the  New 

York  Edison  System  and  Service      .      .      .      .105 
x     Financial  Aspects  of  New  York  Edison  Growth- 
Real  Estate — Insurance 113 

xi     Relations  with  the  City   Street  Lighting — High 

Pressure  Water  Supply 119 

xn     Relations   with   the   Public   and   Public   Service 

Commission — Rates 129 

xin     Company  Publicity,  Literature  and  Advertising  143 
xiv     The   Company  Officials   and  Employees — Rela- 
tions with  the  Industry — Co-operation  during 

the  Great  War 155 

xv     The  Next  Decade  "At  Your  Service"  and  There- 
after        167 

xvi     Statistical  Data 169 

Index  to  Illustrations 179 


vn 


Forty  Years  of  Edison  Service 

1882-1922 


CHAPTER  I 

Invention  of  the  Edison  Lamp  and  Central 
Station  Lighting  System 

THE  historic  scene  is  a  gloomy  Committee  Room  of  the 
British  House  of  Commons;  the  date  is  May  16,  1879. 
Under  a  resolution  of  March  28,  a  Select  Committee  of 
the  House,  with  the  distinguished  chairmanship  of  Dr  Lyon 
Playfair,  famous  politico-scientist,  had  met  to  consider  thfe 
subject  of  Lighting  by  Electricity,  and  under  what  conditions 
public  utilities  should  be  authorized  to  engage  in  the  supply 
of  electric  light.  Breaking  in  upon  sober  evidence  directed 
almost  entirely  to  the  arc  lamp  and  its  use,  vague  references 
had  been  made  to  the  incandescence  of  iridium.  But  there 
was  no  mention  of  an  "incandescent  lamp."  Suddenly  the 
chairman  threw  out  a  casual  remark  about  "American  state- 
ments," and  invited  the  witness  on  the  stand  to  offer  his 
opinion  about  rumors  current  that  a  young  man  in  the 
United  States,  named  Edison,  had  succeeded  in  "subdividing 
the  electric  light."  The  name  of  the  authority  need  not  be 
cited  here,  but  his  reply  is  worth  quoting,  for  rather  flippantly 
but  tersely  it  summed  up  the  contemptuous  attitude  of  most 
authorities  in  America  and  Europe  alike.  "He  has  never  put 
forward  any  practical  statement  in  connection  with  this  in- 
vention that  would  induce  any  scientific  man  to  pay  much 


attention  to  it." 


"So  say  we  all  of  us,"  was  virtually  the  verdict  in  the 
Select  Committee,  for  neither  the  actual  report  nor  the 
"draft  report,"  also  given  very  conscientiously  in  the  "blue 
book,"  takes  the  least  notice  of,  or  pays  the  slightest  further 
attention  to,  Edison  and  his  incandescent  lamp.  Nor  can 
they  really  be  blamed.  The  great  Tyndall  lecturing  in  Jan- 
uary, 1879,  at  the  Royal  Institution,  and  referring  to  the 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

hopelessness  of  the  quest  after  the  subdivision  of  the  electric 
light,  said:  "Knowing  something  of  the  intricacy  of  the  prac- 
tical problem,  I  should  certainly  prefer  seeing  it  in  Edison's 
hands  to  having  it  in  mine."  A  month  later,  Preece,  one  of 
England's  great  electricians,  disposing  of  the  subject  before 
the  Royal  United  Service  Institution  affirmed  flatly:  "Hence 


PORTRAIT  OF  CHARLES  BATCHELOR 

The  first  photograph  ever  taken  by  incandescent  electric  lamps 

the  subdivision  of  the  light  is  an  absolute  ignis  fatuus."  And 
did  not  a  book  issued  in  London  that  year  say  that  they  who, 
like  Edison,  talked  of  "indefinitely  subdividing"  the  electric 
current,  did  not  know,  or  forgot  "that  such  a  statement  is 
incompatible  with  the  well-proven  law  of  the  conservation 
of  energy." 

Now  this  book  is  not  the  story  of  the  incandescent  lamp. 
That  is  another  Iliad.  This  is  the  story  of  the  central  station 
system  of  electric  light  and  power  that  Edison  built  around 
the  lamp  as  its  vital  core.  Let  it  be  here  noted,  however,  in 


EDISON  LAMP  AND  LIGHTING  SYSTEM 

passing  that  Edison  had  begun  his  experiments  on  incan- 
descent lighting  as  far  back  as  September,  1877,  and  had  had 
his  fertile  mind  at  work  on  the  subject  earlier  in  that  year. 
Arc  lighting,  then  attracting  general  attention,  never  inter- 
ested him  greatly.  He  did  not  attempt  to  do  any  inventing  in 
that  field  except  perhaps  to  show  that  it  was  within  easy 
reach  of  his  genius,  although  not  of  immediate  interest.  With 
sagacity  unique  but  quite  characteristic,  he  penetrated  at 
once  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  While  all  the  inventive  talent 
of  the  time  devoted  to  electric  lighting  was  absorbed  with  the 
merits  of  the  arc  lamp,  Edison  was  convinced  by  his  intense 
study  of  the  business  of  illumination  that  the  great  field  to 
occupy  was  that  in  which  gas  had  already  been  profitable  and 
useful.  Indeed,  one  of  the  witnesses  before  the  British  Com- 
mittee poohpoohed  the  electrical  rivalry.  "Why  worry?"  he 
said  in  later  day  slang  phrase.  The  street  lighting  touched  by 
the  arc  lamp  was  only  10  per  cent  of  their  great  output  in 
London.  The  company  had  an  annual  increase  of  at  least  8 
per  cent,  so  that  the  gain  of  just  one  year  would  wipe  out  such 
trivial  competition.  True,  indeed,  but  that  alert  young  man  at 
Menlo  Park,  New  Jersey,  was  after  the  90  per  cent.  On  that 
he  concentrated  his  tremendous  energy,  his  indomitable  cour- 
age, his  genius  as  an  inventor,  his  skill  as  an  electrical  engineer, 
his  ability  as  a  mechanic,  his  physical  resources  as  great  as  the 
mental,  and  all  the  financial  support  that  prior  success  with 
the  quadruplex  telegraph,  the  stock  ticker,  the  telephone  and 
the  marvelous  phonograph  had  placed  very  freely  at  his  dis- 
posal. 

Had  Edison  merely  invented  the  incandescent  lamp,  this 
story  of  the  New  York  Edison  system  could  not  have  been 
written.  A  still  popular  misconception  of  his  real  work  stops 
at  the  lamp,  which  is  about  as  near  the  truth  as  would  be  an 
assertion  that  the  Welsbach  burner  is  the  whole  of  gas  light- 
ing. Edison  really  invented  a  new  art,  and  his  worthy  title  of 
"the  father  of  domestic  electric  lighting"  is  predicated  on  a 

5 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

gigantic  group  of  new  ideas  and  inventions,  of  which  the  in- 
candescent lamp  was  but  the  central  element.  Moreover, 
long  before  the  successful  activities  at  Menlo  Park,  there  had 
been  various  brilliant  efforts  to  produce  a  practical  lamp, 
many  experiments,  many  half-way  successes,  numerous  pro- 
phetic approaches;  but  the 
entire  field  of  invention  is 

,£^  full  of  that.  Even  when  his 

American  optimism  and 
buoyant  enthusiasm,  led 
caustic  critics  to  speak  of 
his  "feverish  method  of 
research  accompanied  by 
propaganda,"  there  were 
some  notable  creators  who 
themselves  were  stimu- 
lated to  real  achievement 
by  Edison's  evident  un- 
shaken conviction  that  he 
was  on  the  right  path  to 
the  goal.  What  is  here 
briefly  narrated  in  a  *few 
\l  words  may  be  seen  illus- 

trated graphically  in    the 
magnificent  Hammer  col- 

OLD  EDISON  LAMP  IN  SERVICE       lection   of   incandescent 
FOR  TWENTY  YEARS  ,      .          , 

lamps    preserved    in    the 

United  Engineering  Building  in  New  York  City,  which  sums 
up  all  that  has  been  done  by  the  light-bringers  in  their  struggle 
to  obey  the  great  command  "Let  there  be  light!" 

The  award  to  Mr  Edison,  as  its  fourth  recipient,  of  the 
John  Fritz  gold  medal,  in  1908,  sets  forth  specifically  that  he 
had  won  this  blue  ribbon  of  the  engineering  arts  from  the  four 
American  national  engineering  societies,  not  only  for  better- 
known  gifts  to  mankind,  including  the  lamp,  but  for  "the  de- 


EDISON  LAMP  AND  LIGHTING  SYSTEM 

velopment  of  a  complete  system  of  electric  lighting,  including 
dynamos,  regulating  devices,  and  meters."  The  use  of  the 
word  "system"  in  this  generously  "large  order"  is  signifi- 
cant. Perhaps  a  noble  word  was  never  more  grossly  abused 
than  was  this  in  the  pioneer  days  of  electric  lighting — the 
period  of  the  late  seventies  midway  into  the  eighth  decade  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Just  as  in  this  automobile  age  a 
new  "car"  is  often  a  mere  readjustment  of  unrelated  parts  to 
aTrTvial  improvement  in  engine  or  gear,  so  forty  years  ago 
electric  lighting  "systems,"  spawning  in  reckless  profusion, 
were  usually  based  on  some  minor  changes  in  the  arc  lamp 
or  the  dynamo — leading  one  observer  to  remark  on  the 
exhibits  at  the  first  American  Electrical  Exposition  at  Phila- 
delphia, in  1884,  that  according  to  his  investigations,  dy- 
namos could  be  painted  any  color  you  chose  without  increas- 
ing their  efficiency.  Thanks  to  the  great  inventions  of  Brush, 
Weston,  Thomson,  Hochhausen,  Sperry  and  others,  the 
American  arc  lighting  industry  was  founded  and  it  soon  dom- 
inated the  world;  but  the  imitators  and  plagiarizers  and  in- 
fringers  were  legion,  possibly  because  it  was  at  bottom  an 
easy,  simple  art  to  break  into.  Once  described  as  "shoe  string 
business,"  in  reference  to  the  flimsy  overhead  circuits,  the 
new  arc  lighting  companies  cluttered  up  the  stock  exchanges 
with  their  securities,  and  the  work  shops  with  casual  jobs 
making  and  repairing  their  machinery.  It  was  a  "halcyon 
time"  while  the  boom  lasted.  At  one  period,  the  Electrical 
World  carried  the  advertising  of  nearly  fifty  arc  lighting 
"systems," 

Today  the  only  one  of  all  those  electric  lighting  sy  stems  >  arc 
or  incandescent^  of  forty  years  ago,  that  survives ,  with  every 
probability  of  permanency ',  is  the  Edison  system. 

For  such  a  complete  disappearance  as  that  it  is  hard  to  find 
a  parallel  in  the  arts  and  mechanics.  Horseshoes  are  still  in 
great  demand.  Sailing  ships  still  dot  the  seas.  Armor  in  war- 
fare is  still  a  panoply.  But  the  prosperous  arc  lighting  enter- 

7 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

prises  whose  supremacy  Edison  challenged  with  his  demon- 
stration of  the  better  way,  have  as  utterly  vanished  from  the 
scene  as  the  dinosaur  and  the  dodo.  Economically,  they  soon 


EDISON  IN  1881 


began  to  fade  away.  Financially,  they  gave  an  entertainment 
like  that  furnished  by  Aaron's  rod  before  Pharaoh.  Electric- 
ally, the  arc  lamp  remains  a  most  useful  and  desirable  appli- 
ance for  a  limited  range  of  work,  but  no  longer  is  a  great 
American  industry  based  on  it. 


EDISON  LAMP  AND  LIGHTING  SYSTEM 

We  can  but  recognize  the  overpowering  prescience  of  the 
Master  Mind  that  at  the  very  outset,  when  all  the  tempta- 
tions and  indications  lay  the  other  way,  and  when  difficulties 
loomed  up  large,  elected  the  incandescent  lamp  as  its  ideal 
and  proceeded  calmly  to  create  around  it  a  "system"  which, 
like  the  lamp  itself  throughout  an  era  of  revolutionary  electri- 
cal discoveries  and  spectacular  advances,  remains  absolutely 
the  same  in  every  basic  principle  and  all  its  fundamental 
fitness  for  public  utility  service  as  at  the  day  of  its  birth. 

One  further  connotation  is  here  in  place,  before  passing  on 
to  a  brief  study  of  the  Edison  lighting  system.  J^ifhfT  S^r— 
inger,  a  famous  gas  engineer  and  expert  of  the  last  genera- 
don,  once  said  emphatically  that  Edison  knew  more  about 
gas  than  any  other  man  he  ever  met.  If  the  philosophic  epi- 
gram is  true  that  genius  is  largely  the  ability  to  recognize 
essential  likeness  between  things,  it  must  be  regarded  as  an- 
other merit  of  Edison  that  having  determined  to  see  whether 
"I  could  subdivide  the  electric  light  so  it  could  be  got  in 
small  units  like  gas,"  he  at  once  became  an  humble  student  in 
the  school  of  that  ifluminant.  According  to  a  Punch  joke  of 
the  time,  one  great  triumph  of  a  certain  English  statesman 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  caught  the  Whigs  in  bathing  and 
stole  their  clothes.  So,  now,  Edison  was  squarely  set  to  avail 
himself  of  all  the  skill  and  experience  of  an  art  that  had  been 
developing  its  best  methods  of  service  for  over  fifty  years. 
Some  time,  in  1878,  he  said:  "J  started  my  usual  course  of 
collecting  every  kind  of  data  about  gas;  bought  all  the  trans- 
actions of  the  gas  engineering  societies,  etc,  all  the  back 
volumes  of  gas  journals.  Having  obtained  all  the  data  and 
investigated  gas-jet  distribution  in  New  York  by  actual 
observations,  1  made  up  my  mind  that  the  problem  of  the 
subdivision  of  the  electric  current  could  be  solved  and  made 
commercial.^ 

Nothing  in  a  military  survey  by  a  War  Staff  or  College  was 
ever  more  scientific — or  less  sensational.  Edison,  since  he 


EDISON  IN  HIS  WORKSHOP— 1879 

Drawn  by  H  Muhrman.  Harper's  Weekly 


EDISON  LAMP  AND  LIGHTING  SYSTEM 

began  inventing,  in  1869,  has  recorded  his  reflections,  studies 
and  experiments  in  a  long  file  of  note  books,  running  into 
over  a  thousand  in  the  latest  series.  Book  184  brims  over  with 
references  to  gas,  spaced  across  two  or  three  years  of  this  mo- 
mentous period.  One  pregnant  item  goes  to  the  very  point 
here  being  made:  "Object,  Edison  to  effect  exact  imitation  of 
all  done  by  gas,  so  as  to  replace  lighting  by  gas,  by  lighting  by 
electricity."  For  wise  forecast,  what  can  excel  the  prophecy 
in  the  little  book,  that  "gas  will  be  manufactured  less  for 
lighting  as  the  result  of  electrical  competition  and  more  for 
heating  etc,  thus  enlarging  its  market  an 


income/7  Then  a  swift  glance  at  trie  coming  age  of  electric 
light  and  power  from  a  common  source.  "It  doesn't  matter  if 
electricity  is  used  for  light  or  for  power";  while  small  motors, 
it  is  urged  "can  be  used  night  or  day  and  small  steam  engines 
are  inconvenient" — with  the  profound  corollary:  "Generally 
poorest  district  for  light,  best  for  power,  thus  evening  up 
whole  city — note  the  effect  of  this  on  investment." 

Gas  and  its  able  engineers  thus  found  an  apt  pupil  in  this 
young  student  of  whom  a  co-worker  has  remarked:  "He  can 
travel  along  a  well-used  road  and  still  find  virgin  soil." 
Mastering  the  whole  technique  of  an  industry  in  which  by 
1879,  a  tota-l  of  $1,500,000,000  had  been  invested,  he  had  soon 
reached  his  first  objective  as  he  thus  summed  it  up:  "Edi- 
son's great  effort — not  to  make  a  large  light  or  a  blinding 
light,  but  a  small  light  having  the  mildness  of  gas."  Thus  far 
advanced,  he  may  now  be  left  to  tell  his  own  story  as  to  the 
complete  Edison  system  of  central  station  lighting  that  had 
been  worked  out,  with  equal  strides,  and  passionate  per- 
sistence that  brooked  no  denial,  at  the  Menlo  Park,  New 
Jersey,  Laboratory.  Of  this  feat  the  great  leader  of  the 
German  electrical  industry,  Emil  Rathenau,  said  on  the 
celebration  of  his  seventieth  birthday,  that  it  was  "beauti- 
fully conceived  down  to  the  very  details  and  as  thoroughly 
worked  out  as  if  it  had  been  tested  for  decades  in  several 

ii 


NEW  JERSEY— THE  WIZARD  OF  ELECTRICITY 

Thomas  A  Edison  experimenting  with  carbonized  paper  for  his  system  of  Electric 

Light,  at  his  laboratory,  Menlo  Park 

Leslie's  Weekly,  1880 


EDISON  LAMP  AND  LIGHTING  SYSTEM 

towns.  *  *  *  All  showed  signs  of  astonishing  skill  and  in- 
comparable genius."  Said  Mr  Edison  long  ago  in  a  terse 
summary,  upon  which  it  would  be  idle  to  attempt  any  im- 
provement: 

"A  complete  system  of  distribution  for  electricity  had  to  be 
evolved,  and  as  I  had  to  compete  with  the  gas  system  this 
must  be  commercially  efficient  and  economical,  and  the  net- 
work of  conductors  must  be  capable  of  being  fed  from  many 
different  points.  A  commercially  sound  network  of  distribu- 
tion had  to  permit  of  being  placed  under  or  above  ground, 
and  must  be  accessible  at  all  points  and  be  capable  of  being 
tapped  anywhere. 

"I  had  to  devise  a  system  of  metering  electricity  in  the 
same  way  as  gas  was  metered,  so  that  I  could  measure  the 
amount  of  electricity  used  by  each  consumer.  These  meters 
must  be  accurate  so  that  we  could  charge  correctly  for  the 
current  used,  and  also  they  must  be  cheap  to  make  and  easy 
to  read  and  keep  in  working  order. 

"Means  and  ways  had  also  to  be  devised  for  maintaining 
an  even  voltage  everywhere  on  the  system.  The  lamps  nearest 
the  dynamo  had  to  receive  the  same  current  as  the  lamps 
farthest  away.  The  burning  out  or  breaking  of  lamps  must 
not  affect  those  remaining  in  the  circuit,  and  means  had  to  be 
provided  to  prevent  violent  fluctuations  of  current. 

"One  of  the  largest  problems  of  all  was  that  I  had  to  build 
dynamos  more  efficient  and  larger  than  any  then  made. 
Many  electrical  people  stated  that  the  internal  resistance  of 
the  armature  should  be  equal  to  the  external  resistance;  but 
I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  wanted  to  sell  all  the  electricity 
I  made  and  not  waste  half  in  the  machine,  so  I  made  my 
internal  resistance  small  and  got  out  90  per  cent  of  saleable 
energy. 

^  "Over  and  above  all  these  things,  many  other  devices  had 
to  be  invented  and  perfected,  such  as  devices  to  prevent 
excessive  currents,  proper  switching  gear,  lamp  holders, 
chandeliers,  and  all  manner  of  details  that  were  necessary  to 
make  a  complete  system  of  electric  lighting  that  could  com- 


SMji — " 


EDISON'S  ELECTRIC  LIGHT— THE  GENERATOR 

From  sketches  by  Theo  R  Davis.  Harper's  Weekly,  1880 


EDISON  LAMP  AND  LIGHTING  SYSTEM 

pete  successfully  with  the  gas  system.  Such  was  the  work 
to  be  done  in  the  early  part  of  1878.  The  task  was  enormous 
but  we  put  our  shoulders  to  the  wheel,  and  in  a  year  and  a 
half  we  had  a  system  of  electric  lighting  that  was  a  success. 
During  this  period,  I  had  upwards  of  one  hundred  energetic 
men  working  hard  on  all  details. 

"One  question  concerning  this  early  system  has  often  been 
asked,  namely:  'Why  did  I  fix  1 10  volts  as  a  standard  pressure 
for  the  carbon  filament  lamp?'  The  answer  to  this  is  that  I 
based  my  judgment  on  the  best  I  thought  we  could  do  in  the 
matter  of  reducing  the  cost  of  copper  and  the  difficulties  we 
had  in  making  filaments  stable  at  high  voltages.  I  thought 
that  no  volts  would  be  sufficient  to  insure  the  commer- 
cial introduction  of  the  system,  and  no  volts  is  still  the 
standard." 

In  his  presidential  address  before  the  Edison  Pioneers  on 
Mr  Edison's  seventy-third  birthday,  February  u,  1920, 
Mr  John  W  Lieb,  vice-president  of  The  New  York  Edison 
Company,  quoted  the  epitome  of  principles  applied  to  the 
new  art  as  "forming  the  foundation  of  one  of  the  most  won- 
derful industrial  developments  the  world  has  ever  seen."  As 
Mr  Lieb  pointed  out,  the  keystone  of  it  all  was  Edison's 
early  intuitive  recognition  of  the  "multiple  arc"  principle, 
as  opposed  to  the  "series"  method  in  which  arc  lamps, 
motors  or  other  appliances  were  connected  in  series  "like 
beads  on  a  string,  and  therefore  not  independent  of  one  an- 
other, but  all  dependent  on  the  integrity  and  continuity  of 
the  circuit  or  string."  The  same  series  method  was  tried  again 
in  electric  railway  work,  and  failed  once  more  with  disastrous 
results.  There  too  it  is  now  all  "multiple  arc."  To  quote  Mr 
Lieb  further: 

"At  the  outset,  Mr  Edison  proceeded  on  different  lines, 
providing  for  absolute  independence  not  only  of  the  indi- 
vidual lamp  but  of  almost  every  other  element  of  the  system, 
from  the  boiler  in  the  station  to  the  interior  wiring  on  the 
consumer's  premises;  and  whether  the  apparatus  be  me- 


THE  PEARL  STREET  DISTRICT— "UNDER  THE  TOWERS" 

From  the  water-color  painting  by  F  Hopkinson  Smith.    Harper's  Weekly,  1882. 


EDISON  LAMP  AND  LIGHTING  SYSTEM 

chanical,  protecting  it  by  stop-valves,  ring  steam  mains,  by- 
passes or  by  apparatus  in  duplicate,  or  electrical,  by  providing 
alternate  paths  and  parallel  supply  circuits,  all  constructively 
connected  like  the  rungs  of  a  ladder.  In  other  words,  the 
system  was  not  dependent  for  its  operation  on  any  single 
one  of  its  elements,  every  feature  was  practically  in  duplicate, 
and  means  were  provided  so  that  any  defective  section  could 
be  instantly  segregated  and  eliminated,  where  practicable, 
automatically. 

"This  principle  of  operating  everything  in  'multiple  arc/ 
a  simple  and  efficient  method  of  securing  duplication  of  every 
important  working  part,  is  absolutely  essential  to  regularity 
and  continuity  of  electric  service  of  the  highest  standard,  and 
this  has  always  been  a  conspicuous  outstanding  feature  of  the 
Edison  system  and  the  corner-stone  of  its  commercial  success. 

"The  art  of  building  dynamo-electric  machines  was  at  this 
time  in  a  very  embryonic  state.  Electricians  at  the  time  re- 
garded the  dynamo  as  the  equivalent  of  a  primary  battery 
and  they  considered  that  like  the  battery,  to  obtain  the 
maximum  amount  of  work  from  a  dynamo,  its  internal  re- 
sistance must  be  equal  to  the  resistance  of  the  external  cir- 
cuit. Edison  recognized  that  to  obtain  the  highest  efficiency 
from  the  dynamo  he  must  reduce  the  internal  resistance  as 
much  as  possible,  and  expend  a  maximum  amount  of  energy 
in  useful  work  in  the  external  circuit.  Hence  his  efforts  to 
produce  a  dynamo  of  low  internal  resistance  and  the  greatest 
possible  elimination  of  hysteresis  and  core  losses  by  laminat- 
ing, japanning  and  separating  with  paper  the  iron  core  discs. 

"The  early  Edison  dynamo  had  many  admirable  features 
of  design,  particularly  in  the  details  of  armature-core  con- 
struction, although  the  brush  holders  and  rocker  arms  were 
excessively  crude.  Mica  insulation  was  first  used  for  com- 
mutator insulation  on  the  'Jumbo'  machines." 

The  presentation  of  the  Edison  central  station  system  at 
the  time  it  became  the  foundation  of  the  fortunes  of  The  Edi- 
son Electric  Illuminating  Company  of  New  York,  would  be 
far  from  complete  without  further  reference  to  the  Edison 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

dynamo.  Edison's  new  theories  ran  counter  to  the  tenets  of 
all  the  textbooks  on  dynamo-electric  machinery,  but  once 
again  his  diagnosis  reached  the  heart  of  the  matter.  It  might 
be  asserted  that  here  Edison  was  even  more  at  home  than  he 
was  with  his  own  still  unfamiliar  lamp,  for  his  knowledge  of 
electrical  energy  and  its  flow  in  circuits,  as  well  as  his  ac- 
quaintance with  the  properties  of  magnets,  was  derived  from 
years  of  practical  work  in  other  fields.  No  man  in  America 
knew  more  than  did  he  about  the  characteristics  of  electro- 
magnets. One  of  the  reasons  why  so  many  of  the  great  leaders 
in  the  later  electrical  arts  came  easily  to  the  front  was  that  as 
telegraphers  they  too  had  sucked  in,  like  mother's  milk,  a 
bosom  understanding  of  batteries,  magnets,  iron  and  copper 
wire,  insulation,  and  scores  of  phenomena  that  no  other  set 
of  men  could  so  well  apply,  broadening  out  ancient  precedent 
to  new  conditions  with  a  skillful  craftsmanship  that  was 
second  nature. 

If  it  be  thought  that  the  partiality  of  friendship  leads  here 
to  an  over-kindly  laudation  of  what  Edison  did  with  his  new 
dynamo,  note  may  be  made  of  a  significant  controversy  that 
adorned  the  classic  pages  of  the  Scientific  American  in 
November,  1879,  when  he  was  once  more  vigorously  assailed 
for  attempting  the  impossible,  and  a  warning  finger  was 
shaken  at  him,  for:  "His  reputation  as  a  scientist,  indeed,  is 
smirched  by  the  newspaper  exaggerations,  and  no  doubt  he 
will  be  more  careful  in  future." 

One  is  tempted  in  a  field  so  fruitful  of  incident  and  anecdote 
to  linger  on  these  early  episodes  of  inventing  and  announcing 
the  Edison  lighting  system.  But,  the  stage  is  set  and  the  cur- 
tain must  now  ring  up  on  the  introduction  to  the  inhabitants 
of  New  York  City  not  only,  but  to  the  world  at  large,  forty 
years  ago,  of  the  now  universal  system  of  electrical  energy 
supply  and  distribution  and  its  application  to  every  pur- 
pose of  which  the  mind  of  man  could  conceive. 


18 


CHAPTER  II 
Early  Demonstrations  of  the  Edison  System 

BY  the  Edison  lamp,  the  very  word  "illumination"  was 
brought  back  to  its  pristine  meaning,  of  something  dec- 
orative as  well  as  useful.  And  now  the  lamp,  associated  with 
the  Edison  system  and  dynamo,  was  to  be  with  the  telephone 
and  the  electric  motor,  one  of  the  trinity  of  great  exponents 
of  the  transcendent  merits  of  the  modern  idea  in  furnishing 
the  public  through  a  central  source  with  light,  heat  and 
power,  communication  and  transportation. 

Away  from  perpetual  lamps  that  must  never  be  allowed  to 
go  out  on  penalty  of  death,  away  from  torches  and  tallow 
candles,  away  from  whale  oil  and  tinder  box,  Edison  had  thus 
carried  the  art  of  illumination  to  its  New  World,  as  virgin  for 
coming  endeavor  and  benefaction  as  that  low  shore  where  on 
the  eve  of  another  October  night,  four  centuries  earlier,  eyes 
of  wave-worn  sailors  straining  into  the  western  darkness  saw 
the  gleam  of  a  flickering  light,  and  were  instantly  at  the 
end  of  their  long  quest  led  by  another  immortal  discoverer. 

Said  Judge  Colt,  in  1894,  in  one  of  the  first  opinions 
validating  the  patents  protecting  the  Edison  lamp.  "He  pro- 
duced the  first  practical  incandescent  lamp;  the  patent  is  a 
pioneer  in  the  sense  of  the  patent  law;  it  may  be  said  that  his 
invention  created  the  art  of  incandescent  electric  lighting." 
During  the  critical,  crucial  years  of  1879-80,  '81  and  '82,  a 
literal  volcano  of  invention  throwing  off  great  chunks  of 
mother  earth  and  streams  of  fertilizing  lava,  Edison  was 
granted  in  America  alone  over  225  patents  on  lamps,  dyna- 
mos and  his  system  of  distribution  or  its  details.  Yet  even 
that  evidence  of  preoccupation  cannot  mask  the  grim  fact 
that  during  the  same  period  he  took  out  as  many  more 
patents  on  inventions  as  widely  apart  as  preserving  fruit  and 


NEW  JERSEY— THE  WIZARD  OF  ELECTRICITY 

Thomas  A  Edison's  System  of  Electric  Illumination 
Leslie  3  Weekly,  1880 


EARLY  DEMONSTRATIONS 

embalming  human  speech;  and  as  opposite  as  telephones  and 
magnetic  ore  crushers.  It  was  a  joy,  yet  almost  suicide,  to 
work  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  such  an  encyclopaedic  genius, 
who  once  wished  he  had  been  born  on  Mars  because  there 
the  days  are  forty  minutes  longer.  The  young  man  who  kept 
the  path  to  the  Patent  Office  hot  with  his  footsteps,  urged 
his  co-workers  on,  when  they  reported  apparent  failure, 
to  persevere,  to  find  causes,  with  injunctions  such  as  this: 
"Well,  fool  with  it  till  you  do."  One  thing  above  all  others 
he  now  yearned  for,  and  that  was  to  break  from  the  cover 
of  his  laboratory  and  demonstrate  to  the  world  that  he 
could  make  good  on  all  his  promises  and  also  justify  the  op- 
timistic utterances  of  even  such  dithyrambic  supporters  as 
Edward  H  Johnson.  Never  noted  for  understatement,  yet 
always  marvelously  in  advance  of  his  times,  Johnson  had  had 
flung  at  him  in  England  the  jest:  "There  is  but  one  Edison 
and  Johnson  is  his  Prophet";  while  on  his  native  heath,  his 
jubilant  pronouncements  were  greeted  with  the  sneering 
taunt  of  "sounding  his  barbaric  yawp  over  the  rooftrees 
of  the  world." 

On  December  21,  1879,  tne  New  York  Herald  gave  a  jolt 
to  the  imagination  of  its  readers  on  Manhattan  Island  by 
devoting  a  whole  page  to  the  Edison  lamp  and  system  of 
electric  lighting.  This  enterprising  publicity  was  done  off  its 
own  bat,  and  it  so  excited  the  public  that  Edison,  though 
embarrassed,  was  grateful  and  decided  to  make  his  first 
exhibition.  This  was  done  on  New  Year's  eve,  1879-80,  when 
special  trains  were  run  out  to  Menlo  Park  by  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad,  and  over  3000  persons,  including  many 
public  officials,  prominent  citizens,  scientists  and  capitalists 
went  to  see  for  themselves.  It  is  unhappily  to  be  recorded  that 
all  were  not  well-wishers.  A  personal  memorandum  by  Mr 
Edison  in  the  hands  of  the  writer  says:  "In  the  early  days  of 
my  electric  light,  curiosity  and  interest  brought  a  good  many 
people  to  Menlo  Park  to  see  it.  Some  of  them  did  not  come 

21 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

^svith    the    best   of  intentions.    I  remember  the  visit  of  one 
expert,  a  well-known  electrician  1  graduate,  of  Tohns  Hopkins 

University.  We  had  the  lamps  exhibited  in  a  large  room,  and 
so  arranged  on  a  table  as  to  illustrate  the  regular  layout  of 
circuits  Tor  houses  and  streets.  Sixty  of  the  men  employed  at 
"the  laboratory  were  used  as  watchers,  each  to  keep  an  eye  on 
a  certain  section  of  the  exhibit,  and  see  there  was  no  monkey- 
ing with  it.  This  man  had  a  length  of  insulated  No  10  wire 
around  his  sleeve  and  back,  so  that  his  hands  would  conceal 
the  ends,  and  no  one  would  know  he  had  it.  His  idea,  of 
course,  was  to  put  this  across  the  ends  of  the  supplying  cir- 
cuits and  short-circuit  the  whole  thing — put  it  all  out  of  bus- 
iness without  being  detected.^Then  he  could  report  how  easily 
the  electric  light  went  out  and  a  false  impression  would  be 
conveyed  to  the  public.  He  did  not  know  that  we  had  already 
worked  out  the  safety  fuse,  and  that  every  little  group  of 
lights  was  protected  independently.  He  slyly  put  this  jumper 
in  contact  with  the  wires — and  just  four  lamps  went  out  ., 
on  the  section  he  tampered  with.  The  watchers  saw  him  do  it, 
however,  and  got  hold  of  him,  and  just  led  him  out  of  the 
place  with  language  that  made  the  recording  angels  jump 
to  their  typewriters."  T" 

It  was  through  all  this  period  that  intensive  work  went 
into  the  Edison  dynamo,  whose  relatively  large  masses  of 
iron  were  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  other  machines  of  the  day. 
Francis  Upton  was  doing  splendid  work  on  magnetism  that 
might  well  have  been  brought  into  literature  as  was  that  of 
Hopkinson  and  Kapp,  feeling  out  as  he  did  novel  magnetic 
curves  that  showed  where  saturation  had  begun  and  when  it 
was  useless  to  spend  more  energy  in  "building  up  the  field." 
Thus  Edison  with  the  famous  Gramme  ring  dynamo  as  his 
point  of  departure  soon  perfected  his  own  generator  for  the 
"system";  and  whereas  an  efficiency  of  40  per  cent  had  been 
regarded  before  as  within  reach  he  jumped  it  to  twice  that 
figure;  so  that  after  John  Kruesi  had  finished  the  first 


22 


EARLY  DEMONSTRATIONS 

practical  dynamo,  and  after  Upton  had  tested  it  thoroughly 
and  verified  his  figures  and  results  several  times — for  he,  too, 
was  surprised — Edison  was  able  to  tell  the  world  that  he  had 
made  a  generator  giving  an  efficiency  of  90  per  cent. 

Swift  was  the  rush  of  invention,  though  slow  often  its 
official  registration  and  recognition.  Thus  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  experiments  and  researches,  the  first  Edison  applica- 
tion for  a  patent  on  his  "System  of  Electrical  Distribution," 
was  signed  January  28,  1880,  but  it  was  not  until  August  30, 
1887,  that  the  Patent  Office  issued  to  him  the  "bedrock" 
Patent  No  369280 — five  years  after  The  Edison  Electric  Il- 
luminating Company  of  New  York  had  had  it  in  commercial 
operation.  Of  it  the  Electrical  Review  remarked  at  that 
time:  "It  would  seem  as  if  the  entire  field  of  multiple  dis- 
tribution were  now  in  the  hands  of  the  owners  of  this  patent 
—about  as  broad  as  a  patent  can  be,  being  regardless  of 
specific  devices,  and  laying  a  powerful  grasp  on  the  funda- 
mental idea  of  multiple  distribution  from  a  number  of  gener- 
ators throughout  a  metallic  circuit."  Indeed  1880  bristled 
with  this  kind  of  performance,  notably  the  patent  on  the 
famous  "Feeder"  invention  to  which  fundamentally  the 
dwellers  on  Manhattan  Island  owe  the  beautiful  steadiness 
of  their  incandescent  lamps,  its  object,  successfully  achieved, 
being  to  obviate  any  "drop"  in  pressure,  that  would  other- 
wise render  the  lights  dim  at  points  of  heavy  demand  or  at 
points  remote  from  the  generating  central  station.  There  was 
an  enormous  saving  in  copper  used  in  the  circuits  thus  laid 
out;  but  the  engineering  and  commercial  economy  effected 
was  carried  a  gigantic  step  further  when  Edison  passed 
from  this  simpler  two-wire  system  to  the  now  universal 
three-wire.  Compared  with  what  went  before  the  Edison 
three-wire  patent,  which  was  granted  just  as  the  New  York 
system  was  getting  into  its  stride,  in  1883,  effected  a  saving 
of  no  less  than  62^2  per  cent  in  the  amount  of  copper  re- 
quired. 


THE  ELECTRIC  LIGHT  IN  HOUSES 

Laying  the  tubes  for  wires  in  the  streets  of  New  York 
Drawn  by  W  P  Snyder,  Harper's  Weekly,  1882 


EARLY  DEMONSTRATIONS 

All  this  was,  at  the  time,  going  on  behind  the  scenes.  Out 
in  front  the  audience  was  clamoring  for  the  show,  with  im- 
patient applause  mingled  with  derisive  hoots.  The  "ragging" 
was  indeed  very  fine,  and  breezy  "Ed"  Johnson,  stage  man- 
ager, longed  to  run  the  curtain  up,  for  he  knew  they  had  a 
spectacle  that  would  "bring  down"  the  house.  It  had  indeed 
reached  the  moment  when  the  "parent"  Edison  Electric 
Light  Company,  formed  in  1878,  must  produce  proof  or  shut 
up  the  little  Edison  manufacturing  shops  struggling  for  pre- 
carious existence  as  they  brought  out  the  lamps,  the  dyna- 
mos and  the  various  parts  of  the  "system."  Be  it  remembered 
that  outside  the  bare  copper,  the  iron,  steel  or  sheet  brass, 
Edison  had  literally  to  build  with  his  own  hands  all  that  bore 
his  name.  Though  some  of  the  backers  may  have  wavered  a 
bit  as  the  demands  for  money  grew  in  the  experimental 
stages,  Edison  had  loyal  financial  adherents.  They  could  but 
emulate  the  courage  of  one  who  then  as  later  gave  evidence 
of  the  faith  that  was  in  him  by  throwing  all  he  had  into  the 
melting  pot. 

Hence  it  came  about,  in  a  rather  curious  way,  that  the  re- 
hearsals for  the  Edison  system  to  be  the  first  established  as  a 
public  utility  in  New  York  took  place  in  Europe.  Interest 
there  in  what  Edison  was  doing  became  as  keen  as  in  America, 
and  skepticism  was  giving  way  to  enthusiastic  admiration, 
especially  in  England,  France,  Germany  and  Italy,  associated 
with  a  keen  desire  to  get  in  on  the  "ground  floor,"  although 
the  capitalists  would  hardly  have  expressed  it  that  way.  Mr 
E  H  Johnson,  who  had  already  broken  ground  for  Edison  in 
England  with  earlier  inventions,  was  straining  at  the  leash 
to  sail  over  again  with  some  "brighter  and  better"  and  as- 
suredly "bigger  thing"  with  which  to  astonish  the  Britishers, 
between  whom  and  himself  a  real  affection  ever  existed. 
Paris,  "La  Ville  Lumiere,"  was  appropriately  the  spot  where 
Edison  made  his  first  foreign  display.  For  the  first  electrical 
exhibition  ever  held  he  shipped  to  Paris,  early  in  1881,  the 


EDISON'S  FIRST  DISTRICT 

The  tall  buildings  which  now  cast  their  shadows  over  the  district  where 
Edison  Service  had  its  beginning.  Etching  by  E  Horter 


EARLY  DEMONSTRATIONS 

largest  dynamo  constructed  up  to  that  year.  It  weighed  with 
its  driving  engine  27  tons,  and  the  armature  weighed  6  tons. 
It  was  capable  of  energizing  no  fewer  than  1000  of  the  Edison 
standard  lamps  of  that  day.  The  New  York  Edison  Company 
now  has  dynamos  each  of  which  will  maintain  700,000  lamps 
of  three  times  the  candle  power.  But  that  direct-connected 
Edison  machine  of  the  time  was  veritably  an  eighth  wonder 
of  the  scientific  world,  studied  admiringly  by  the  savants  of 
Europe.  Mr  Charles  Batchelor,  the  Englishman  who  had  long 
worked  side  by  side  with  Edison,  and  whose  steady  hand 
despite  nervous  excitement  had  carried  the  first  Edison  car- 
bon lamp — was  the  French  representative.  He  was  soon  busy 
organizing  the  French  Edison  corporation,  and  gathered  in 
for  his  chief  at  home  Mr  Nikola  Tesla,  who  later  was  to  reap 
in  America  the  fruits  of  his  long  study  of  the  alternating  cur- 
rent which  was  to  receive  its  first  extensive  application  in  the 
great  electrical  transmission  and  utilization  of  the  energy  of 
Niagara.  Mr  Johnson,  following  close  on  Batchelor's  heels 
was  sent  to  London,  to  demonstrate  the  new  lighting  system 
practically  and  to  make  an  exhibit  at  the  Crystal  Palace 
Electrical  Exposition  of  1881-2.  Not  only  did  he  accomplish 
triumphantly  his  specific  mission,  but  to  reinforce  the  staff 
at  Menlo  Park  he  persuaded  to  go  over  to  Edison  as  his 
private  secretary  Mr  Samuel  Insull,  whose  personal  rela- 
tions with  the  inventor  and  whose  later  distinguished  leader- 
ship of  the  central  station  utilities  of  the  country  is  one  of 
the  most  notable  chapters  of  modern  American  development. 
Called  to  his  new  work  by  cable  Mr  Insull  arrived  in  New 
York  on  March  i,  1881,  in  time  to  take  an  active  part  in  the 
preliminaries  connected  with  the  organization  of  the  various 
Edison  manufacturing  enterprises,  and  to  be  the  indispens- 
able link  between  the  "Laboratory," — the  Edison  Electric 
Light  Company  at  famous  old  "Sixty-five  Fifth  Avenue," 
for  many  memorable  years  the  home  and  hearthstone  of  the 
Edison  lighting  system, — and  all  who  had  to  do  with  its  intro- 

27 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

duction.  Incidentally  it  must  be  here  recorded  that  the  man 
selected  to  carry  knowledge  of  the  technique  of  the  Edison 
central  station  system  into  Italy,  in  the  latter  part  of  1882, 
was  Mr  John  W  Lieb,  an  early  Edison  worker,  and  now 
vice-president  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company. 

Nicknamed  after  a  then  popular  elephant,  Edison's  No  i 
"Jumbo"  Dynamo  had  gone  to  Paris.  The  second  and  third 
were  installed  in  London  by  Johnson,  who,  assisted  by  his 
engineer,  W  J  Hammer,  an  early  Edison  worker,  inaugu- 
rated on  January  12,  1882,  a  jooo-light  exhibition  plant  on 
the  Holborn  Viaduct.  It  is  quite  a  common  practice  in  the 
theatrical  world  to  "try  out"  a  play  quietly  "in  the  pro- 
vinces" before  putting  on  the  boards  of  Broadway;  and  in 
this  instance  London's  position  was  reversed.  Edison  had  had 
as  a  matter  of  history  his  first  actual  central  electric  lighting 
station  supplying  lamps  and  a  motor  or  two  at  old  Menlo 
Park.  It  was  fed  by  means  of  underground  conductors  im- 
bedded in  asphaltum  and  surrounded  by  a  wooden  casing,  all 
worked  out  by  John  Kruesi,  who  afterwards  patented  his  in- 
ventions predicated  on  Edison's  specifications  for  the  work. 
Now,  in  London,  something  of  the  same  kind  was  repeated  on 
a  much  larger  scale,  foreshadowing  not  merely  as  an  exhi- 
bition, but  commercially,  that  which,  with  Edison's  own 
handiwork  in  it  and  his  own  seal  on  it,  was  to  be  inaugu- 
rated a  few  months  later,  on  September  4,  in  New  York.  It 
would  probably  have  been  the  nucleus  of  a  real  public 
utility,  but  for  the  passage  of  the  unwise  English  electric 
lighting  act  of  1882,  which  throttled  central  station  develop- 
ment in  the  British  Isles  for  many  years.  The  Holborn  plant 
"hooked  on"  the  famous  City  Temple  of  Dr  Joseph  Parker, 
the  first  church  in  the  world  to  be  electrically  illuminated. 
Through  Sir  William  H  Preece,  who  had  started  to  scoff  two 
or  three  years  before  but  now  remained  to  praise,  the  tele- 
graph operating  room  of  the  General  Post  Office  at  St 
Martin's-le-Grand  was  equipped  with  400  lamps;  and  the 

28 


EARLY  DEMONSTRATIONS 

streets  and  bridges,  integral  part  of  the  Viaduct,  were  lighted 
by  lamps  controlled  from  the  plant.  Mr  Johnson  in  some  un- 
published biographical  data  makes  a  very  interesting  state- 
ment: "At  this  time  tall  masts  surmounted  by  a  group  of 
high  candle  power  arc  lamps  were  much  in  vogue  in  London, 
and  I  desired  to  enter  into  competition  with  them  by  sub- 
stituting an  electric  lamp  of  3-2  candle  power  for  the  ordinary 
gas  jet  on  each  gas  post  throughout  the  length  of  the  Holborn 
Viaduct.  For  this  permission  was  granted  me  by  the  city,  and 
the  work  was  carried  out  eliciting  an  extremely  favorable 
criticism  from  the  press  and  public  generally.  This  was  un- 
questionably the  beginning  of  the  end  of  group  arc  lighting, 
and  I  think  may  now  be  taken  as  the  beginning  of  the  end 
of  the  arc  light  itself."  On  one  other  feature,  the  evolution  of 
fuses  and  fixtures,  Mr  Hammer  deserves  to  be  quoted  as 
follows:  "Up  to  the  time  of  the  construction  of  this  plant  it 
had  been  customary  to  place  a  single-pole  switch  on  one  wire 
and  a  safety  fuse  on  the  other;  and  the  practice  of  putting 
fuses  on  both  sides  of  a  lighting  circuit  was  first  used  here. 
Some  of  the  first,  if  not  the  very  first,  of  the  insulated  fixtures 
were  used  in  this  plant,  and  many  of  the  fixtures  were  equip- 
ped with  ball  insulating  joints,  enabling  the  chandeliers  or 
'electroliers'  to  be  turned  around,  as  was  common  with  the 
gas  chandeliers.  This  particular  device  was  invented  by  Mr 
John  B  Verity,  whose  firm  built  many  of  the  fixtures  for  the 
Edison  Company  and  constructed  the  notable  Edison  electro- 
liers shown  at  the  Crystal  Palace  Exposition  of  1882." 

So  much  for  history — for  the  real  facts  in  connection  with 
the  early  demonstration  and  instruction  of  the  Edison  cen- 
tral station  system  all  leading  up  to  crystallizing  and  focus- 
ing in  the  Pearl  Street  Station  of  the  Edison  Electric  Illu- 
minating Company  of  New  York;  a  plant  which  Edison 
regarded  as  the  true  embodiment  of  his  hopes,  ideals  and  in- 
ventions in  electric  lighting,  and  to  which  he  devoted  a  loving 
care  and  patient  thought  unsurpassed  in  any  of  the  other 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

campaigns  through  which  he  had  fought  to  the  perfect  finish 
of  happy  fruition.  This  chapter  may  therefore  fitly  close  with 
a  brief  statement  that  sets  right  some  inaccuracies  so  gen- 
erally accepted  that  they  are  found  in  the  whole  range  of  the 
voluminous  literature  devoted  to  Edison.  The  assertion  has 
been  made  that  the  Edison  Plant  at  Appleton,  Wis,  was  his 
first  central  station,  started  August  15,  1882.  The  present 
anniversary  in  New  York  caused  a  natural  investigation  of 
dates  and  data;  and  it  has  been  a  matter  of  general  surprise 
to  discover  that  Appleton  was  not  actually  started  until  Sep- 
tember 30.  How  the  error  arose  is  not  quite  clear,  but  it  may  be 
conjectured  that  the  confusion  of  dates  started  when  on  Au- 
gust 18,1882,  the  young  Western  Edison  Company  of  Chicago 
made  a  contract  with  the  new  Appleton,  Wis,  Edison  Light 
Company  to  supply  and  erect  two  Edison  "K"  dynamos  to 
be  driven  by  water  power  and  to  be  capable  of  supplying 
55:0  lamps.  Mr  E  T  Ames,  sent  to  make  the  installation, 
gives  the  date  of  going  into  operation  as  late  as  October  15, 
but  the  local  newspapers  may  be  believed  when  they  stated 
at  the  time  that  the  first  lights  "flashed"  September  30. 
The  tiny  plant  was  surely  a  very  modest  one,  with  a  single 
dynamo  of  180  light  capacity  of  10  candle  power  each;  arid  it 
was  housed  in  a  very  unpretentious  wooden  shed,  resembling 
many  a  rural  Ford  garage  of  today.  It  has  the  glory,  however, 
of  being  the  first  Edison  water  power  station,  and  the  little 
machine  solidly  built  kept  going  merrily  until  its  "patent  ran 
out"- — seventeen  full  years — or  until  1899,  when  it  gracefully 
expired  with  the  century.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  horse- 
power are  now  furnished  from  the  eternal  assets  of  Nature  by 
the  "white  coal"  of  water  power  in  the  United  States  alone, 
saving  the  fuel  supply,  through  central  station  companies, 
many  bearing  the  magic  name  of  Edison,  in  every  hydro- 
electric State  in  the  Union.  Hats  off  to  Appleton! 


3° 


CHAPTER  III 

Formation  of  the  First  New  York 
Edison  Company 

TOEHOLD  !  I  make  all  things  new,"  is  a  phrase  that  may 
fj  be  reverently  appropriated  to  describe  the  effect  of  the 
successive  electrical  inventions  of  the  last  fifty  years.  More 
particularly  is  the  influence  of  the  telephone,  the  arc  lamp, 
the  incandescent  lamp,  the  electric  motor,  the  trolley  car,  the 
underground  roads,  the  electric  elevator,  the  Edison  central 
station  system  of  distribution,  to  be  seen  in  the  great  centers 
of  population.  Of  all  the  modern  cities  New  York  best  exem- 
plifies what  electricity  can  do,  for  in  every  branch  of  electrical 
utilization  it  is  pre-eminently  the  largest  exponent  and  patron. 
Perhaps  that  is  a  mere  corollary  of  having  the  largest  number 
of  inhabitants,  but  Greater  New  York  is  the  vivid  exhibition 
of  the  furthest  reach  of  the  electrical  arts,  all  save  machinery 
manufacture;  but  even  the  largest  electrical  factories  in  the 
world,  at  Schenectady  in  the  Empire  State,  are  administered 
from  New  York,  which  is  equally  the  center  of  all  American 
electrical  finance. 

It  was  but  fitting,  if  not,  indeed,  inevitable  that  Man- 
hattan Island  should  be  the  scene  of  Edison's  first  real  cen- 
tral station  experiment  as  a  public  utility,  just  as  it  was  the 
home  of  the  parent  Edison  Electric  Light  Company,  and  of 
all  the  other  great  enterprises  with  which  his  name  had  been 
connected  since  he  struggled  into  town  seeking  an  humble  job 
at  the  telegrapher's  key,  but  with  a  head  fuller  of  more  great 
inventions  and  arts  than  ever  before  sprang  from  one  human 
brain.  There  have  been  many  creative  forces  at  work  to  make 
the  splendid  metropolis  that  sits  on  its  magnificent  throne- 
gateway  to  the  New  World,  but  he  who  went  down  on  his 
hands  and  knees  in  her  very  dirt  to  give  her  the  use  of  electric 
light  and  power,  from  subcellar  to  the  very  crest  of  her  tallest 

31 


THE  WORLD  AND  TRIBUNE  BUILDINGS 

Hall  of  Records  at  right,  Municipal  Building  construction  at  the  left.  Etching  by  E  Horttr 


FORMATION  OF  EDISON  COMPANY 

towering  skyscraper,  might  well  be  selected  as  her  modern  in- 
carnation, representative  to  stand  alongside  the  man  who 
put  the  "Clermont"  on  her  shining  Hudson  River  a  hun- 
dred years  ago. 

The  Edison  Electric  Illuminating  Company  of  New  York 
was  incorporated  in  1880  with  a  million  dollars  of  capital 
stock  by  Messrs  Tracy  R  Edson,  James  H  Banker,  Robert 
L  Cutting,  Jr,  Nathan  G  Miller,  Grosvenor  P  Lowrey 
(many  years  Edison's  faithful  and  devoted  legal  adviser), 
and  E  P  Fabbri  and  J  F  Navarro,  of  Drexel,  Morgan  & 
Company.  From  first  to  last  John  Pierpont  Morgan  was  an 
admiring  friend  and  stalwart  fiduciary  supporter.  The  first 
meeting  of  the  new  company  for  the  election  of  officers  was 
held  December  20,  when  in  addition  to  Messrs  Fabbri, 
Edson,  Cutting  and  Miller  there  were  also  present  as  direc- 
tors Messrs  S  B  Eaton,  Henry  Villard,  R  M  Galloway  and 
James  O  Green.  At  this  time  Dr  Norvin  Green,  later  presi- 
dent of  the  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company,  was  elected 
president,  Mr  Fabbri,  treasurer,  and  Mr  Calvin  Goddard, 
secretary.  On  March  23,  1881,  Major  Eaton,  vice-president 
of  the  parent  Edison  Lighting  Company,  was  also  made  vice- 
president  of  the  Illuminating  Company;  but  curiously  it  was 
not  until  December  16,  a  year  after  organizing,  that  Mr 
Edison  was  appointed  "engineer"  to  the  Company.  One  of 
the  many  features  of  policy  elaborated  and  adhered  to  by  Edi- 
son in  launching  his  central  station  system,  was  the  issuance 
by  the  parent  company  holding  his  patents  of  a  license  to  each 
new  local  company  wherever  operating,  for  the  exclusive  use 
of  the  system  in  the  specified  territory;  and  this  license  em- 
braced also  isolated  plants  that  might  be  called  for  within  the 
territory.  The  license  was  granted  in  consideration  of  a  cer- 
tain sum  of  money  and  a  fixed  percentage  of  the  capital 
stock  of  the  subcompany;  so  that  Edison  thus  elected  to 
stand  or  fall  by  the  operating  success  of  the  licensees  inter- 
mediary between  himself  and  the  public. 

33 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

Then  came  the  selection  of  a  site  for  the  station  in  New 
York  and  the  purchase  of  the  property  for  the  plant  in  what 
was  to  be  known  as  the  First  District.  The  area  thus  to  be 
served  was  about  a  sixth  of  a  square  mile,  bounded  by  Wall, 
Spruce,  Ferry  and  Nassau  Streets  and  the  East  River.  Of 
course,  an  ideal  location  of  a  central  station  is  the  very  center 
of  the  area  served,  but  the  topographical  center  might  be  un- 
desirable for  many  reasons;  and  the  end  of  these  four  decades 
in  electrical  generating  and  transmission  practice,  due  to 
radical  changes  in  the  art,  finds  nearly  all  large  central 
stations  governed  not  even  by  access  to  condensing  water  or 
ease  of  coal  supply,  but  often  by  factors  of  far  wider  scope 
such  as  relation  to  water  powers  in  remote  mountains  and  by 
the  production  of  energy  even  at  the  pit's  mouth.  Fortunately 
none  of  these  latter  complexities  had  then  developed  to 
worry  a  man  whose  mind  was  already  fully  charged  with 
difficult  problems.  His  own  autobiographical  notes  in  the 
writer's  hands  tell  the  story  very  graphically:  "While  plan- 
ning for  my  first  New  York  Station — Pearl  Street — of  course, 
I  had  no  real  estate,  and  from  lack  of  experience  had  very 
little  knowledge  of  its  cost  in  New  York;  so  I  assumed  a 
rather  large  liberal  amount  of  it  to  plan  my  station  on  it.  It 
occurred  to  me  one  day  that  before  I  went  too  far  with  my 
plans  I  had  better  find  out  what  real  estate  was  worth.  In 
my  original  plan  I  had  200  by  200  feet.  I  thought  that  by 
going  down  on  a  slum  street  near  the  waterfront  I  would  get 
some  pretty  cheap  property.  So  I  picked  out  the  worst 
dilapidated  street  there  was,  and  found  I  could  only  get  two 
buildings  each  25  feet  front,  one  100  feet  deep  and  the  other 
85  feet  deep.  I  thought  about  $  10,000  each  would  cover  it; 
but  when  I  got  the  price  I  found  that  they  wanted  $75,000 
for  one  and  $80,000  for  the  other.  Then  I  was  compelled  to 
change  my  plans  and  go  upward  in  the  air  where  real 
estate  was  cheaper.  I  cleared  out  the  building  entirely  and 
built  my  station  of  structural  iron  work  running  it  up  high." 

34 


FORMATION  OF  EDISON  COMPANY 

It  is  pathetically  amusing  to  observe  Edison  hunting  for 
the  site  he  wanted  in  the  "worst  dilapidated  section"  of  a 
"slum  street,"  for  old  Pearl  Street  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century  had  been  one  of  the  very  aristocratic  thoroughfares 
of  old  New  York,  a  choice  residential  quarter  for  wealthy 
families,  and  the  haunt  of  fashion.  One  more  commentary  on 
the  "swift,  quick  shutter  effect"  that  has  barely  preserved 
the  picture  of  a  new  street  before  it  is  blended  into  yet  an- 
other with  the  subtle  transitions  of  an  Edison  motion  picture 
film.  Since  the  average  life  of  even  a  modern  skyscraper  is 
only  twenty-five  years,  there  is  unfortunately  no  ground  for 
hoping  that  in  years  to  come  New  York  may  settle  down  and 
lose  its  "covered  wagon"  habit  of  moving  on  nightly — unless 
we  take  seriously  the  recent  philosophic  observation  of  Mr 
Charles  A  Coffin,  the  recognized  leader  of  the  Electrical 
Manufacturing  Industry,,  who,  looking  back  on  forty  years 
of  gigantic  electrical  manufacturing,  remarked  on  electricity's 
powers:  "Heretofore  we  have  been  compelling  it  to  take  us 
to  the  city,  and  it  has  done  so  beautifully,  more  quickly  and 
comfortably  than  we  have  ever  been  moved  before.  Here- 
after we  shall  simply  touch  a  button  and  have  it  take  the 
city  out  to  us." 

Far  from  speculating  as  to  what  protean  electricity  was 
going  to  do  later  in  the  disintegration  of  American  cities,  the 
board  of  directors  of  the  first  Edison  Lighting  Company  had 
to  bend  all  their  thoughts  and  energies  to  securing  a  squalid 
little  corner  of  Manhattan  Island — a  backyard  dustheap  on 
which  Edison  could  nurture  his  first  tender  "plant."  Those 
thus  responsible  for  the  construction  of  this  pioneer  plant 
were  some  already  mentioned,  to  whom  were  added  Messrs 
J  Hornig,C  L  Clarke,  HM  Byllesby  and  others.  The  property 
secured  by  the  board  was  the  double  building  Nos  255-257 
Pearl  Street,  occupying  a  lot  50  by  100  feet.  It  was  four 
stories  high  with  a  fire  wall  dividing  it  into  equal  parts. 
One  of  these  parts  was  converted  for  the  uses  of  the  station 

35 


FORMATION  OF  EDISON  COMPANY 

as  a  generating  plant,  and  the  other  half  was  made  into  a 
tube  shop  as  a  center  for  all  necessary  preliminary  under- 
ground construction  work.  At  the  present  time,  a  central 
station  is  designed  and  built  for  its  specific  purpose  and  use. 
It  has  been  said  that  a  civilization  can  be  judged  by  its 
architecture  and  the  ruins  that  it  leaves,  an  apothegm  that 
may  apply  better  in  the  twentieth  century  than  it  did  in 
the  nineteenth  so  far  as  the  use  of  electric  light  and  power  is 
concerned.  Forty  years  ago,  no  architect  had  even  penciled 
the  outlines  of  such  beautiful  buildings  as  were  later  put  up 
by  The  Edison  Electric  Illuminating  Company  of  New  York 
and  its  successor,  The  New  York  Edison  Company.  Even  the 
earlier  electrical  arts  had  but  the  fine  Western  Union  building 
to  point  to  with  pride,  on  lower  Broadway.  Not  only  did 
Edison  give  light  a  structural  value,  but  he  has  furnished  the 
architect  with  many  a  new  opportunity;  and  if  the  future 
Patagonian  perches  on  the  ruins  of  Brooklyn  Bridge  in  ages 
to  come,  edifices  most  likely  to  be  preserved  for  his  contem- 
plation will  be  the  massive  central  stations  seated  strate- 
getically  on  the  banks  of  the  East  River.  But  when  that 
little  coterie  of  directors  went  slumming  for  real  estate  in  1 88 1, 
any  old  building  was  good  enough  for  the  power  plant.  It  was 
usually  a  converted  factory.  One  in  New  York  was  made  over 
from  an  ancient  soap  works,  another  a  wall  paper  factory, 
and  the  dynamos  standing  on  greasy  plank  floors  usually 
delivered  their  current  to  a  huge  wooden  switchboard! 

While  the  old  Pearl  Street  Station  buildings  were  being 
adapted  to  their  new  service,  the  laying  of  the  Edison  mains 
in  the  First  District  underground  had  to  be  prepared  for.  A 
later  chapter  will  deal  with  that  vital  part  of  the  New  York 
Edison  system.  Here  it  is  very  necessary  to  note  that  in  put- 
ting his  wires  underground  Edison  as  in  practically  all  the 
other  features  of  his  system  ran  counter  to  experience  and 
prejudice.  A  great  telegrapher  earlier  than  himself,  Morse, 
in  introducing  the  electro-magnetic  telegraph  had  tried  first 

37 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

* 

to  put  his  wires  in  the  earth,  where  atmospheric  influences 
could  not  disturb  them;  and  the  frequent  complete  stoppages 
of  telegraph  service  by  storms  since  1845  nave  proved 
Morse's  foresight,  as  he  very  reluctantly  put  up  the  first  of 
the  millions  of  poles  and  wires  that  have  spoiled  the  beauty 
of  street  and  landscape  and  darkened  the  very  skies.  When 
Edison  quite  easily  got  his  first  permits  and  franchises  to 
break  open  the  streets,  there  was  no  such  thing  known  in  the 
world  as  the  underground  system  he  had  in  mind;  but  while 
it  may  not  have  been  exactly  relevant  he  had  a  pet  answer 
to  the  objectors  in  his  frequent  remark:  "Why,  you  don't  lift 
water  pipes  and  gas  pipes  up  on  stilts."  So  slow,  indeed,  was 
electrical  opinion  in  coming  around  to  Edison's  standpoint, 
that  many  years  later,  a  schism  over  the  underground  ques- 
tion threatened  to  wreck  the  great  representative  National 
Electric  Light  Association,  many  members  fighting  for  the 
old  order  of  things.  It  is  also  significant  that  when  New  York 
State  legislation  created  the  underground  system  for  Man- 
hattan Island  the  engineer  chosen  for  the  Board  of  Electrical 
Control  was  S  S  Wheeler,  who  had  "learned  how"  working 
side  by  side  with  Edison  on  the  mains  for  the  First  District 
fed  from  old  Pearl  Street. 

The  capital  of  The  Edison  Electric  Illuminating  Company 
of  New  York,  merely  $1,000,000,  soon  proved,  of  course,  all 
too  little  for  its  object,  but  none  of  it  could  be  applied  to  this 
underground  work  nor  indeed  to  any  of  the  other  manufac- 
turing that  was  necessary  to  equip  the  plant.  For  that  the 
local  company  had  to  look  to  its  licensor,  the  parent  Edison 
Electric  Light  Company,  but  the  inventor  himself  dipped 
deeply  into  his  own  resources,  and  in  that  way  he  was  vir- 
tually helping  to  finance  the  local  corporation. 

The  strain  of  it  all,  on  everybody,  in  every  direction  was 
tremendous.  Edison  probably  never  enjoyed  himself  more  in 
his  life — the  unperturbed  center  of  the  storm.  He  had  be- 
come an  international  celebrity — and  his  electric  light  shares 

38 


FORMATION  OF  EDISON  COMPANY 

of  $100  par  value  were  being  quoted  at  $3,500  per  share.  But 
none  of  those  things  moved  him  from  the  work  in  hand,  pur- 
sued in  a  spirit  very  far  from  that  with  which  the  critical 
unbelievers  credited  him.  Says  Mr  Wheeler,  fresh  from  Col- 
umbia College,  of  this  very  period:  "When  I  joined  the  Edi- 
son forces,  I  found  that  correct  application  of  theory  was  the 
preferred  method  of  dealing  with  each  subject;  that  those 
who  looked  at  problems  from  this  viewpoint  were  sought 
after  and  appreciated.  This  different  atmosphere  which 
tended  to  bring  about  a  scientific  basis  of  station  operation, 
awakened  all  my  enthusiasm  and  made  an  impression  on 
me  that  I  shall  never  forget."  Another  glimpse  of  an  amusing 
nature  is  furnished  by  Mr  Lieb.  The  public  had  in  general 
been  swept  off  its  feet  by  the  startling  succession  of  electrical 
advances,  and  as  now  after  the  Great  War — another  crisis 
in  human  affairs — the  air  was  full  of  talk  of  spiritualism,  hyp- 
notism, auto-suggestion,  mesmerism  and  magnetism's  effect 
on  the  body.  The  colossal  fields  of  the  Jumbos — the  largest 
electromagnets  that  had  ever  been  constructed — afforded  an 
excellent  opportunity  for  a  test.  So  Mr  Lieb,  the  first  elec- 
trician of  old  Pearl  Street,  saw  a  chance  to  test  the  current 
psycho-physiological  theories:  "When  the  armature  was  re- 
moved, the  big  cylindrical  gap  that  was  left  gave  plenty  of 
room  to  accommodate  a  mattress  as  a  bed.  To  make  a  trial,  I 
slept  all  night  in  'the  air  gap'  with  the  field  fully  excited. 
On  waking  after  a  nap  of  four  or  five  hours — for  that  was  all  the 
sleep  anyone  ever  got  in  those  trying  days — my  sensations 
were  not  unusual;  neither  was  my  'big-head'  feeling  changed, 
for  it  was  a  sort  of  a  chronic  state  with  most  of  us  at  the 
time."  Some  years  later  the  famous  English  electrical  en- 
gineer, Dr  Sylvanus  P  Thompson,  repeated  the  experi- 
ment in  London — again  without  the  slightest  cerebral  or 
nervous  effect. 

Other  reminiscences  of  the  pre-operation  period  at  Pearl 
Street  will  fit  better  perhaps  into  the  coming  chapter.  A  pause 

39 


II 

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t/j 

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O 
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2 

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FORMATION  OF  EDISON  COMPANY 

may  be  made  here  to  contemplate  with  quiet  amazement  the 
extraordinary  spectacle  that  centered  around  the  group  of 
men  associated  with  the  young  enterprise.  No  industry  fol- 
lows more  closely  than  the  electrical  the  fluctuations  of  life  in 
the  great  modern  city,  the  ebb  and  flow  of  its  human  torrents 
of  travel,  the  daily  rise  and  fall  of  commercial  activity,  the 
booms  and  breaks  in  manufacturing  intensity;  the  season- 
able exigencies  of  the  calendar;  the  enwrapping  habits  that 
fit  the  average  citizen  tighter  than  his  clothes,  the  changes  in 
fashion,  and  the  shifts  of  population  en  masse  into  new  areas 
of  occupancy.  Yet  this  little  bunch  of  pioneers  and  the  weird 
genius  at  their  head  were  jauntily  taking  on  a  proposition 
that  in  sheer  boldness  had  stood  unequalled  since  Joshua 
thrust  his  sword  up  into  the  solar  system.  Thus  spake  the 
gallant  son  of  Nun  as  he  waged  Hunnish  war  on  the  Amori- 
ties:  "Sun,  stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeon,  and  thou,  Moon,  in 
the  valley  of  Aijalon,"  and,  according  to  the  veracious  chroni- 
cler, it  so  happened.  Now  Edison  and  his  Pearl  Street  tribe 
undertook  in  a  more  modern  way  to  go  Joshua  one  better.  A 
great  American  philosopher,  not  foreseeing  the  advent  of 
automobiles,  recommended  the  youth  of  the  country  to  hitch 
their  carts  to  nothing  smaller  than  an  asteroid.  With  Joshua 
and  Emerson,  the  points  of  view  were  purely  personal  and 
local,  regardless  of  trouble  caused  everybody  else  beyond 
the  mere  scene.  Edison  swinging  out  into  space  with  plans 
immeasurable  and  scope  illimitable  put  electric  light  and 
power  supply  in  multiple  arc  with  the  Ages.  Clocks  and 
calendars  and  precessions  of  the  Equinoxes,  all  are  purely 
incidental  to  the  conception  and  execution  of  a  central  sta- 
tion system  that  runs  smoothly  with  ceaseless  beat  and 
rythmic  hum  every  second  of  time,  and  whose  dependability 
is  superior  even  to  that  of  the  great  orb  of  day — at  least  in 
the  murky  meridian  of  old  Manhattan. 

Why,  of  course,  no  other  ideal  could  be  adequate  for  light 
and  power  supply!  Most  other  modern  services,  utilities  and 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

•^ 

conveniences  are  subject  to  interruptions  that  are  accepted 
with  a  degree  of  patience  or  despair  that  is  to  be  rated  by  the 
individual  reaction.  "Line  busy/'  "Train  late,"  "Wires  down" 
and  all  kinds  of  such  "rain  checks"  beset  the  great  public 
utilities  upon  which  intercourse  and  happiness  so  much  de- 
pend. But  it  is  splendid  testimony  to  the  manner  in  which 
Edison's  noble  confidence  in  the  supreme  ability  of  his  in- 
ventions to  do  all  and  be  all  that  is  expressed  in  "Readiness 
to  Serve,"  that  even  a  faint,  fluttering  flicker  in  the  lamp  at 
desk,  machine  or  bedside,  anywhere  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  New  York,  should  it  ever  occur  or  attract 
attention,  is  but  for  an  instant  noted,  and  then  the  unheeding 
world  wags  on. 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  First  Edison  Central  Station — 
Pearl  Street,  New  York 

WHEN  we  put  down  the  tubes  in  the  lower  part  of  New 
York,  in  the  streets,  we  kept  a  big  stock  of  them  in 
the  cellar  of  the  Station  at  Pearl  Street.  As  I  was  on  all  the 
time,  I  would  take  a  nap  of  an  hour  or  so  in  the  day  time — 
any  time — and  I  used  to  sleep  on  those  tubes  in  the  cellar.  I 
had  two  Germans  who  were  testing  there,  and  both  of  them 
died  of  diphtheria  caught  in  the  cellar,  which  was  cold  and 
damp.  It  never  affected  me,"  said  Edison. 

The  Germans  doubtless  took  their  regular  sleep.  Edison 
didn't,  and  hence  escaped,  although  his  intensely  robust 
vitality  and  resistance  to  fatigue  account  for  the  freedom 
from  disease  he  has  enjoyed  all  his  life.  At  any  rate,  just  then, 
with  Pearl  Street  going  into  operation,  it  is  certain  that  he 
never  retired  to  his  luxurious  cellar  couch  until  he  could  no 
longer  stand  up  in  the  trenches.  There  was  a  small  bedroom 
oh  the  third  floor  of  the  station,  but  Edison  was  too  busy  to 
seek  it.  For  all  the  men  around  Pearl  Street,  a  shave  and  a 
clean  shirt  were  rare  enjoyments  until  the  plant  went  into 
operation — and  even  then  the  days  of  feverish  activity  and 
ceaseless  anxiety  were  by  no  means  over  at  once,  nor  for 
many  months  thereafter. 

The  story  of  old  Pearl  Street  bristles  with  many  human 
and  personal  incidents,  a  few  of  which  will  be  set  down  here 
as  corroborative  detail;  but  a  glance  must  first  be  taken  at  the 
plant.  It  was  very  small, — judged  by  any  modern  scale  of 
electrical  development, — but  after  all,  the  "Santa  Maria' 
had  to  come  before  the  "Majestic'  and  the  smaller  of  the  two 
was  infinitely  larger  than  the  latest  "greyhound  of  the  seas"  in 
essential  significance.  In  the  case  of  Pearl  Street,  some  of  its 

43 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


STREET  CONNECTIONS  AT  OLD  PEARL  STREET 

material  was  actually  built  into  later  stations.  For  example, 
girders  meant  for  257  Pearl  Street  went  into  the  construction 
of  the  succeeding  Duane  Street  plant;  while  the  boilers;  after 
twelve  years'  service  on  the  old  original  site,  were  removed  to 
the  Fifty-third  Street  station,  and  there  again  continued  in 
useful  operation  until  May  22,  1902 — in  all,  nearly  two 
decades  of  hard  service. 

The  steam  plant  at  Pearl  Street  consisted  of  four  Babcock 
&  Wilcox  boilers,  rated  at  240  horsepower  each,  with  cast  iron 
headers,  injectors,  and  a  steam  pump  with  connections  to 
each  unit,  the  water  circulating  through  exhaust  heaters  at 
the  rear  of  the  building.  The  vault  under  the  front  sidewalk 
and  basement  had  machinery  for  coal  and  ash  handling.  A 
20  horsepower  engine,  countershafted,  drove  a  screw  con- 
veyor that  delivered  the  coal  to  the  furnaces,  another  screw 
taking  the  ashes  from  the  grates  and  discharging  them  into  a 


44 


FIRST  EDISON  CENTRAL  STATION 

hopper  under  the  street  sidewalk.  The  same  husky  little 
engine  ran  a  fan  blower  for  forced  furnace  draft,  and  for 
supplying  air  to  the  stokehole,  where  it  was  greatly  needed. 
Moreover,  a  system  of  blast  pipes  was  provided  to  feed  cool- 
ing air  to  the  "Jumbo"  armatures — first  instance  of  the  kind. 
The  fall  of  a  sparrow  may  have  its  effect  on  the  Milky 
Way,  a  theorem  to  the  discussion  of  which  Professor  Wil- 
liam James  devotes  some  charming  passages  in  his  treat- 
ment of  "Great  Men  and  Their  Environment."  The  present 
writer  makes  bold  to  assert  that  what  Edison  did  at  Pearl 
Street  with  the  steam  engines  of  his  day  was  very  largely 
the  leading  influence  that  has  brought  steam  utilization  into 
its  altogether  modern  regime  of  superheat  and  the  steam  tur- 
bine. Agreement  must  be  yielded  to  the  assertion  of  James 


PRIMITIVE  REGULATING  APPARATUS  USED  AT  THE 
PEARL  STREET  STATION  IN  1882 


45 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


that  originally  all  these  things  were  flashes  of  genius  in  an 
individual  head.  Adopted  by  the  race  and  become  its  herit- 
age, they  then  supply  inspirations  to  the  new  geniuses  whom 
they  environ  to  make  new  inventions  and  discoveries — and 
so  the  ball  of  progress  rolls  on.  Mr  Frank  J  Sprague,  more  of 
an  authority  on  steam  engines  than  the  great  Harvard  psy- 
chologist, when  discussing,  in  1909,  the  award  of  the  John 

Fritz  gold  medal  to 
Mr  Charles  T  Porter 
forhis  beautifulmech- 
anisms,  used  as  far 
back  as  1867  to  drive 
alternating  current 
generators  in  France 
for  lighthouses,  spoke 
of  the  debt  of  electric- 
ity to  Porter.  Having 
tried  out  a  high-speed 
Porter  at  the  Menlo 
Park  laboratory,  Edi- 
son invited  the  great 
designer  to  give- him 
half-a-dozen  Porter- 
Allen  engines  for  Pearl 
Street,  each  of  the 
"Jumbos"  to  be  driven  by  its  own  direct-connected  engine. 
Sprague  compared  the  intimate  relationship  thus  established 
between  the  dynamo  and  the  engine — steam  and  electricity 
—to  an  industrial  marriage,  one  of  the  most  important  in 
the  engineering  world.  Here  in  this  inseparable  partnership 
were  the  two  machines  economizing  energy  and  space,  en- 
hancing efficiency,  augmenting  capacity,  and  reducing  in- 
vestment. It  was  well  put  by  Sprague,  and  still  "the  greater 
lay  before,"  in  the  coming  ten  years  and  in  the  steam  turbine. 
The  engines  were  each  of  125  horsepower  nominal,  operat- 


BATTERY  OF  A  THOUSAND  LAMPS  ON 
AN  UPPER  FLOOR  AT 
257  PEARL  STREET 


FIRST  EDISON  CENTRAL  STATION 

ing  under  steam  pressure  at  120  pounds  at  350  revolutions 
per  minute,  with  a  piston  speed  of  933  feet  per  minute.They 
were  mounted  on  the  same  bedplate  as  the  dynamos,  and 
could  be  speeded  up  to  give  200  horsepower.  The  tenth  of 
the  famous  Edison  Bulletins  dated  June  5,  1882,  stated  that 
at  1 10  volts,  the  generators  would  supply  current  to  1200 


THE  EDISON  CENTRAL  STATION  DYNAMO  FOR 
I2co  SIXTEEN  CANDLE  POWER  LAMPS 

sixteen-candle  power  Edison  lamps,  but  in  later  tests  and 
emergencies  they  were  run  up  to  1750  lamps.  In  the  month  of 
May,  1882,  three  of  the  "Jumbos"  had  been  delivered  at 
Pearl  Street;  and  on  July  5  the  first  of  them  was  put  into 
operation  with  the  Porter-Allen  engine.  Three  days  later 
current  was  switched  into  a  bank  of  1000  lamps  upstairs — the 
first  real  utilization  of  Pearl  Street  current.  But  at  the 
moment  there  was  not  a  single  testing,  indicating  or  record- 
ing electrical  instrument  in  the  place.  The  generating  units 
were  grouped  in  lines  parallel  to  the  sides  of  the  building, 

47 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


EDISON'S  STEAM  DYNAMO— MENLO  PARK 

three  in  a  row.  The  main  busbars  of  the  station,  double  half- 
round  copper  bars,  such  as  were  used  in  the  No  i  two-wire 
Edison  underground  tubes,  were  fastened  to  the  side  walls, 
with  a  connection  between  them  across  the  ceiling.  To  these 
busbars  the  dynamos  were  connected  by  flexible  copper 
cables,  which  spanned  the  space  between  the  wall  and  the 
upright  copper  rods  attached  to  the  arms  of  the  dynamo 
brush  holders.  One  of  each  pair  of  copper  uprights  was  fur- 
nished with  safety  catch  holders,  but  the  other  connection 
was  solid  copper  bars.  In  turn,  all  this  was  connected  through 
the  busbars  by  copper  arms  carrying  safety  catches  at  the 
outer  Pearl  Street  end  of  the  building,  to  the  exterior  Edison 
service  supply  tube  feeders. 

Above  the  main  busbar  was  a  set  of  auxiliary  busses  lead- 
ing to  the  test  lamp  bank  upstairs  and  connected  to  one  pole 
of  each  dynamo  ahead  of  the  switch,  and  on  the  other  pole 
to  the  corresponding  S  or  N  pole  of  the  main  bus.  Thus  the 
dynamo  could  be  thrown  on  the  lamp  bank  for  testing,  or 
for  giving  the  particular  engine  a  load,  before  closing  the 
main  switch  that  connected  the  various  dynamos  in  parallel 


FIRST  EDISON  CENTRAL  STATION 

on  the  main  bus.  This  main  switch  or  "circuit  breaker"  was 
one  of  the  pioneer  types  of  "knife"  switches,  with  the  con- 
tacts in  series — an  unusual  breaking  capacity  being  thus  se- 
cured. It  was  operated  by  avoirdupois  and  main  force,  the 
attendant  putting  all  his  weight  and  muscle  onto  a  long 
handle  pivoted  at  one  end,  and  released  by  powerful  steel 
springs  held  by  a  trip  pawl.  In  front  of  the  main  contacts 
carried  by  the  switch  handle,  was  an  auxiliary  blade  for  the 
field  circuit,  which  always  insured  contact  before  the  main 
line  contacts  engaged,  and  breaking  after  the  main  circuit  had 
been  broken.  Supplementing  this  field  switch  was  a  plug 
switch  attached  to  the  wall  and  connected  to  a  field  circuit 
busbar  running  the  length  of  the  station,  with  an  auxiliary 
break  through  a  lamp  resistance  so  as  to  furnish  a  by-path  for 
the  field  discharge.  The  dynamo  fields  were  controlled  from 
the  upper  floor  by  simply  moving  simultaneously,  by  means 
of  a  horizontal  shaft  and  bevel  gearing,  a  number  of  horizon- 
tal contact  arms  across  contacts  connected  with  copper  wire 


EDISON'S  LARGE  DYNAMO  ELECTRIC  GENERATOR,  1882 


49 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


BROAD  AND  WALL  STREETS,  1882 

resistances  or  spools  wound  over  wooden  frames.  The  absence 
will  be  noted  of  a  central  switchboard,  the  control  switches 
for  each  dynamo  being  at  first  located  at  the  machine.  Pres- 
sure was  regulated  through  an  automatic  indicator,  with  an 
electromagnet  across  the  main  circuit,  its  pull  being  opposed 
by  a  heavy  spring.  The  armature  of  the  magnet  carried  a 
contact  engaging  two  relay  contacts.  On  the  side  where  the 
pressure  was  high,  there  was  a  red  lamp  in  the  relay  circuit; 
on  the  low,  a  blue.  Normally,  neither  lit  up;  but  if  the  electro- 
motive force  rose  one  or  two  volts  above  the  desired  limit 
of  pressure,  the  red  lamp  flashed;  and  the  attendant  turning 
the  hand  wheel  of  the  field  regulator  threw  some  resistance 
into  the  field  circuit  of  the  machine  running  high.  If,  instead, 
the  blue  lamp  lit  up,  resistance  was  duly  cut  out.  The  plant 
had  several  of  these  indicators  which  were  taken  frequently 
to  the  Edison  Machine  Works,  at  Goerck  Street,  to  be  ad- 

5° 


FIRST  EDISON  CENTRAL  STATION 

justed  by  comparison  with  a  Thomson  reflecting  galvano- 
meter using  current  from  some  Daniell  cells. 

A  little  later,  working  up  some  of  Edison's  ideas  that  burst 
out  daily  as  points  developed,  this  very  primitive  indicator 
was  supplanted  by  the  "Bradley  Bridge,"  a  rough  form  of 
the  Howell  pressure  indicator  used  for  many  years  in  Edison 
stations.  Moreover,  while  it  took  more  time  and  special  in- 
vention to  get  all  the  general  metering  taken  care  of  in  the 
station  itself,  no  time  was  lost  by  Edison  in  introducing  his 
electrolytic  meter  to  be  an  exact  analogue  of  the  gas  meter. 
On  one  of  the  upper  floors  of  Pearl  Street  was  installed  a 
meter  room,  where  the  plates  of  the  Edison  meter  were  pre- 
pared and  weighed. 

This  is  as  good  a  place  as  any  to  pay  tribute  briefly  to  the 
merits  of  that  meter,  adopted  at  a  time  when  nobody  else 
had  given  any  attention  to  the  measurement  of  current  sup- 
plied at  the  point  of  consumption — the  customers'  premises. 
Edison  introduced  the  "European  plan"  into  charging  for 
electricity  supply  and  use.  If  anything  could  possibly  run 
counter  to  the  old  notion  that  Edison  was  haphazard,  empiri- 
cal, happy-go-lucky  in  his  methods,  it  was  surely  his  invet- 
erate habit  of  trying  all  things,  proving  all  things,  testing 
all  things,  measuring  all  things.  The  principle  of  his  elec- 
trolytic meter  is  that  illustrated  in  the  ability  of  an  electric 
current  to  decompose  chemical  substances.  Edison,  being  a 
great  chemist  as  well  as  electrician,  naturally  hit  on  that 
method.  His  meter  was  a  deposition  bath,  summing  up  some 
of  the  modern  electrometallurgical  processes.  It  consisted  of 
a  glass  cell  in  which  two  little  plates  of  chemically  pure  zinc 
were  placed  in  a  solution  of  zinc  sulphate.  When  a  customer 
used  his  lamps  or  motor,  a  certain  definite  tiny  quantity 
of  the  current  then  used  was  diverted  to  flow  through  the 
meter  from  the  positive  plate  to  the  negative.  Hence,  the 
latter  increased  in  weight  by  the  metallic  deposit  on  it  of 
zinc  carried  over  from  the  positive  plate;  and  this  difference 

51 


FIRST  EDISON  CENTRAL  STATION 

could  be  and  was  checked  up  by  periodical  removal  and 
weighing  of  the  plates;  say  once  a  month.  Several  devices 
and  methods  protected  this  cheap  and  simple  device  from 
defective  recording,  and  a  themrostat  with  a  lamp  in  circuit 
kept  the  solution  from  freezing  at  low  temperatures.  At  one 
time,  the  meters  in  use  represented  75  per  cent  of  the  entire 
lamp  capacity  of  all  the  existing  Edison  customers.  Up 
to  October,  1896,  The  New  York  Edison  Company  used  such 
meters  exclusively  on  customers'  premises,  about  which  time 
came  the  transition  to  mechanical  meters,  perfected  largely 
through  the  genius  of  Elihu  Thomson;  so  that  on  September 
i,  1898,  there  were  installed  on  the  New  York  system  4874 
chemical  meters  and  5619  mechanical  meters. 

Another  measurement  feature  that  may  well  be  referred 
to  here  is  that  of  underground  service  testing.  Mr  S  S  Wheeler 
in  some  autobiographical  notes  says:  "Methods  were  elab- 
orated carefully  for  measuring  the  total  leakage  each  day 
without  interrupting  the  service,  and  kindred  methods  for 
determining  the  proportion  of  current  that  went  out  to  each 
part  of  the  old  First  District,  downtown,  south  of  City  Hall. 
This  was  done  by  measuring  the  difference  of  potential  be- 
tween the  switchboard  and  the  outer  end  of  each  of  the 
twenty  'feeders/  A  mammoth  galvanometer  was  gradually 
designed  for  this  work  and  set  up.  It  consisted  of  two  single 
silk  fiber  suspension  reflecting  instruments,  one  placed  above 
the  other.  To  keep  this  arrangement  free  from  the  stray  mag- 
netism of  the  station,  the  iron  shell  of  a  small  portable  steam 
boiler  was  lowered  over  the  novel  outfit,  completely  enclosing 
it,  with  two  holes  in  the  shield  for  the  beam  of  light  to  come 
out  and  be  read.  The  scale  was  placed  at  a  distance  of  three 
meters,  and  a  double  scale  was  made  out  of  the  usual  card- 
board printed  meter  scales,  but  taking  three  graduations  as 
one.  The  instrument  table  and  chair  for  the  reader  operator 
were  set  between  the  galvanometers  and  the  scale,  facing  the 
latter.  Instead  of  the  ordinary  narrow  slit  to  permit  the  pas- 

53 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


THE  DYNAMO  ROOM 

First  Edison  Electric  Lighting  Station  in  New  York 
Scientific  American,  August  26,  1882 

sage  of  the  ray  of  light  from  the  reflecting  mirrors,  a  focussing 
lens  was  used,  so  that  the  picture  of  the  filament  of  the  in- 
dicating lamp  appeared  on  the  scale." 

Another  odd  phenomenon  noted  just  as  Pearl  Street*  was 
about  to  go  into  operation  was  the  appearance  oi  consider- 
able current  coming  from  the  underground  network,  with 
little  ostensible  source.  It  was  in  reality  earth  current,  about 
which  very  little  was  then  known,  save  by  submarine  cable 
workers  and  telegraphers,  who  disliked  it  more  than  radio 
operators  now  hate  "static."  Edison,  applying  at  once  his  ex- 
perience at  the  key,  sent  Wheeler  off  to  Tillotson's  old  elec- 
trical supply  shop  in  Dey  Street  for  a  telegraph  relay,  and 
then  they  proceeded  to  get  an  idea  of  the  strength  of  the  stray 
current  by  seeing  how  it  operated  the  relay.  Both  of  the  eager 
diagnosticians  of  Mother  Earth's  strange  vagabonds  spent 
several  days  and  nights  in  the  Station  building,  without 
leaving  it,  at  the  very  time  the  start  was  due.  Cots  were 

54 


FIRST  EDISON  CENTRAL  STATION 

brought  in  for  them  and  put  up  right  alongside  the  generating 
units. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  steam  engine  troubles  were 
much  more  serious  than  electrical.  Edison  would  endure  no 
flicker  in  his  lamps;  he  must  have  perfect  regulation.  Mr 
Charles  L  Clarke,  who  brought  to  this  early  work  a  consum- 
mate all-around  engineering  skill,  furnishes  a  very  interesting 
note  as  to  the  problem,  the  solution  of  which  led  to  the  adop- 
tion of  the  Armington-Sims  engine  at  a  very  early  stage.  He 
says,  of  the  "hunting"  or  "seesawing"  of  engines  when  put  in 
multiple:  "At  the  Pearl  Street  Station  the  machines  were 
supported  on  long  iron  floor  beams,  and  at  the  high  speed  of 
350  revolutions  per  minute  considerable  vertical  vibration 
was  given  to  the  engines.  The  writer  is  inclined  to  the  opinion 
that  this  vibration,  acting  in  the  same  direction  as  the  action 
of  gravitation  was  the  primary  cause  of  the  'hunting/  In  the 
Armington-Sims  engine  the  controlling  forces  in  the  opera- 
tion of  the  governor  were  the  centrifugal  force  of  revolving 
weights  and  the  opposing  force  of  compressed  springs;  and 
neither  the  action  of  gravitation  nor  the  vertical  vibrations 
of  the  engine  could  have  any  sensible  effect  upon  the  gov- 
ernor." Wheeler  notes,  moreover,  that  to  overcome  such 
"racing,"  "A  remarkable  mechanical  device  was  made  at  the 
Edison  Machine  Works.  It  was  constructed  in  a  great  hurry, 
and  applied  at  once.  It  consisted  of  a  line  shaft,  placed  along 
the  wall,  made  of  a  shaft  inside  a  tube;  the  shaft  and  the  tube 
being  bent  in  opposite  directions  and  then  riveted  together. 
The  object  was  to  secure  torsional  rigidity.  Levers  were 
clamped  to  the  shaft,  connected  to  the  governor  rods  of  each 
engine.  The  governors  were  all  in  this  way  tied  together 
mechanically,"  so  that  if  one  engine  went  fast,  all  the  engines 
were  compelled  to  do  real  "team  work"  and  go  fast  also.  As  a 
historical  fact,  Wheeler  comments,  the  first  instance  of 
coupling  up  the  dynamos  was  actually  that  of  tying  into  the 
system  the  small  machines  of  the  "isolated"  Edison  plant 

55 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


THE  LAST  OF  OLD  PEARL  STREET 

that  had  by  urgent  wish  of  James  Gordon  Bennett,  been 
installed  in  the  building  on  the  corner  of  Fulton  and  Nassau 
Streets. 

The  best  reminiscence  to  hand  of  what  went  on  in  the  trial 
runs  of  the  unruly  "Jumbo"  units  hitched  together  is,  "how- 
ever, that  given  by  Edison  himself.  He  admits  that  for  once 
"my  heart  was  in  my  mouth,"  and  with  that  the  row  began. 
"Then  we  started  another  engine,  and  threw  them  in  parallel. 
Of  all  the  circuses  since  Adam  was  born,  we  had  the  worst 
then.  One  engine  would  stop  and  the  other  would  run  up  to  a 
thousand  revolutions;  and  then  they  would  seesaw.  The 
trouble  was  with  the  governors.  When  the  circus  commenced, 
the  gang  that  was  standing  around  ran  out  precipitately,  and 
I  guess  some  of  them  kept  running  for  a  block  or  two.  I 
grabbed  the  throttle  of  one  engine  and  E  H  Johnson,  who 
was  the  only  one  present  to  keep  his  wits,  caught  hold  of  the 
other,  and  we  shut  them  off."  One  of  the  sprinters,  who  got 
only  so  far  as  the  end  of  the  dynamo  room  adds:  "It  was  a 

56 


FIRST  EDISON  CENTRAL  STATION 

terrifying  experience,  as  I  didn't  know  what  was  going  to  hap- 
pen. The  engines  and  dynamos  made  a  horrible  racket,  from 
loud  and  deep  groans  to  a  hideous  shriek,  and  the  place 
seemed  to  be  filled  with  sparks  and  flames  of  all  colors.  It  was 
as  if  the  gates  of  the  infernal  regions  had  suddenly  been 
opened." 

The  clever  shafting  experiment  was  evidently  not  enough 
to  ensure  perfect  operation  in  the  future;  and  Edison  had 
the  great  good  luck  to  find  the  man  who  could  help  him  out 
of  a  very  serious  situation.  "I  got  hold  of  Gardiner  C  Sims 
and  he  undertook  to  build  an  engine  to  run  at  350  revolutions 
and  give  175  horsepower.  He  went  back  to  Providence  and  set 
to  work,  and  brought  the  engine  back  with  him  to  the  shop. 
It  worked  only  a  few  minutes  when  it  busted.  That  man  sat 
around  that  shop,  and  slept  in  it  for  three  weeks,  until  he  got 
his  engine  right  and  made  it  work  the  way  he  wanted  it  to. 
When  he  reached  this  period,  I  gave  orders  for  the  engine 
works  to  run  night  and  day  until  we  got  enough  engines, 
and  when  all  was  ready  we  started.  Then  everything  worked 
all  right.  One  of  these  engines  that  Sims  built  ran  twenty- 
four  hours  a  day  three  hundred  'and  sixty-five  days  in  the 
year,  for  over  a  year  before  it  stopped." 

The  important  date,  September  4,  1882,  has  at  last  arrived. 
The  names  of  those  present  must  be  set  down.  Not  many 
survive,  but  nothing  on  earth  could  tempt  those  who  do  to 
give  up  the  honor  and  glory  of  the  occasion.  The  immediate 
Edison  group  at  the  moment  or  who  dropped  in  later  in  the 
day  comprised,  alphabetically, — S  Bergmann,  C  S  Bradley, 
H  M  Byllesby,  H  A  Campbell,  C  L  Clarke,  Charles 
Dean,  T  A  Edison,  Calvin  Goddard,  E  T  Greenfield,  Julius 
Hornig,  John  Hood,  Samuel  Insull,  E  H  Johnson,  John 
Kruesi,  John  Langton,  John  W  Lieb,  W  D  Mac  Queston, 
W  H  Meadowcroft,  M  F  Moore,  J  P  Morgan,  Augustus 
Noll,  H  C  Patterson,  F  A  Scheffler,  H  J  Smith,  Francis  R 
Upton,  J  H  Vail,  S  S  Wheeler,  Charles  Wirt,  W  S  Andrews 

57 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

•*, 

and  a  few  others  whose  names  unfortunately  escape  us. 
Among  the  old  associates  of  Mr  Edison  who  were  in  Europe 
at  the  time  may  be  mentioned  Mr  Charles  Batchelor,  Mr 
W  J  Hammer,  Mr  Francis  Jehl  and  Mr  E  G  Acheson.  The 
technical  press  was  represented  by  Joseph  Wetzler,  of  the 
Scientific  American  and  of  the  Electrical  World.  W  A  Ander- 
son was  there  for  the  Board  of  Fire  Underwriters.  There  were 
also  several  newspaper  reporters,  all  of  whose  comments  ran 
true  to  form  for  their  respective  journals.  The  Tribune 
described  the  lamp  "a  small  blazing  horseshoe  that  glowed 
within  a  pear-shaped  globe,  pendant  beneath  a  porcelain 
shade."  The  Herald  spoke  of  "supplanting  the  dim  flicker 
of  gas"  and  admitted  that  "last  night  it  was  fairly  demon- 
strated that  the  Edison  light  had  a  very  fair  degree  of  suc- 
cess." The  Times  got  down  to  details  and  explained  that  to  get 
light,  all  you  had  to  do  was  to  "turn  the  thumbscrew";  but 
on  behalf  of  men  who  work  in  editorial  rooms  it  burst  into 
gratitude  for  the  beginning  of  a  new  night  that  would  mean 
eyes  preserved  and  health  saved.  The  Sun  as  usual  was 
picturesque  and  personal,  and  a  sketch  one  could  not  spare 
is  given  of  Mr  Edison,  who  "wore  a  white,  high-crowned 
derby  hat  and  collarless  shirt."  He  had,  indeed,  dressed  for 
the  occasion,  and  well-founded  rumor  has  it  that  collar  and 
tie  and  a  long  frock  coat  were  lying  around  somewhere,  dis- 
carded in  a  hurry.  How  could  he  possibly  keep  his  hands  off! 


CHAPTER  V 

Introduction  of  the  Edison  Service — 
Early  Customers 

ONE  of  the  leading  indictments  of  this  industrial  era  with 
its  automatic  machinery,  of  which  Edison  glories  in 
being  an  exponent  for  these  forty  years,  is  that  its  revolutions, 
whatever  boons  have  been  brought  to  mankind,  are  also  the 
origin  and  cause  of  some  suffering  as  well.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  contention  may  well  be  advanced  that  the  benefits  con- 
ferred by  electricity  in  its  applications  have  a  minimum  of 
sadness  and  bitterness  to  alloy  their  real  value  to  society.  It 
is,  indeed,  as  urged  by  Mr  C  A  Coffin,  going  further  than  any 
of  the  new  agents  at  command  to  redress  evils  arisen  since 
coal  first  laid  its  smutty  fingers  on  life  and  civilization.  Some 
aspects  of  such  a  plea  for  the  higher  merits  of  electrical  de- 
velopment will  emerge  as  the  story  of  New  York  Edison  ser- 
vice through  four  decades  unfolds  itself. 

Neither  political,  social  nor  economic  problems  were  in 
the  minds  of  Edison  and  his  backers  when  Pearl  Street 
started  up.  Having  put  it  very  successfully  in  operation, 
what  necessarily  began  to  bother  them  was  the  intimate, 
vital  question  of  income.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  not  until 
February,  1883,  six  months  after  current  was  turned  on  and 
light  was  furnished  that  any  charge  was  made.  As  Edison 
himself  says:  "We  were  not  very  commercial.  We  put  many 
customers  on,  but  did  not  make  out  many  bills.  After  the 
Station  had  been  running  several  months  and  was  a  technical 
success,  we  began  to  look  after  the  financial  part.  We  started 
to  collect  some  bills;  but  we  found  our  books  were  kept  very 
badly,  and  that  the  person  in  charge,  who  was  no  business 
man,  had  neglected  that  part  of  it.  So  I  got  the  directors  to 
permit  me  to  hire  a  man  to  run  the  Station."  Mr  Edison 

59 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


BROADWAY,  NORTH  FROM  CORTLANDT  STREET 
IN  THE  EARLY  EIGHTIES 

then  engaged  Mr  Charles  E  Chinnock,  superintendent  of  the 
Metropolitan  Telephone  Company  of  New  York,  an  able, 
conscientious  manager,  to  put  the  station  on  a  commercial 
basis,  and  to  pay,  say  5  per  cent  on  its  valuation  of  $600,000. 
He  also  guaranteed  Chinnock  $10,000  if  he  made  good,  and 
later  paid  him  that  sum  out  of  his  own  pocket. 

If  any  one  in  these  happier  days,  when  everybody  pays 
his  lighting  bills  promptly,  thinks  Chinnock  had  a  good  time 
of  it,  the  records  again  point  in  the  other  direction.  That 
ten  thousand  was  earned,  every  dollar  of  it,  and  first  of  all 
he  had  to  clean  up  the  situation  growing  out  of  the  highly 
unscientific  bookkeeping  of  his  predecessor.  Edison  watched 
the  proceedings  closely.  "I  remember  one  man  who  had  a 
saloon  on  Nassau  Street.  He  had  had  his  lights  burning  for 

60 


INTRODUCTION  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

two  or  three  months.  It  was  in  June,  and  Chinnock  put  in  a 
bill  for  $20;  July  for  $20;  August  about  $28;  September 
about  $35.  Of  course,  the  nights  were  getting  longer.  October 
about  $40;  November  about  $45.  Then  the  man  called  Chin- 
nock  up.  He  said: 'I  want  to  see  you  about  this  electric  light 
bill. 'Chinnock  went  up  to  see  him.  He  asked:  'Are  you  the 
manager  of  this  electric  light  plant?'  Chinnock  replied, 
'I  have  the  honor.'  'Well,'  he  stated,  'my  bill  has  gone  from 
$20  up  to  $28,  $35,  $45.  I  want  you  to  understand,  young 
fellow,  that  my  limit  is  $60.'  ' 

Mr  John  Pierpont  Morgan  was  somewhat  more  meticu- 
lous and  particular,  and  wasn't  at  all  sure  about  the  inerrancy 
of  that  queer  "wet  measure";  so  cards  were  printed  and  hung 
on  each  fixture  in  the  Morgan  offices  in  Wall  Street.  Each 
card  noted  the  number  of  lamps  on  the  fixture  and  the  time 
at  which  they  were  turned  on  and  off  each  day.  The  test  was 
for  a  month,  at  the  end  of  which  the  lamp  hours  were  added 
up  and  figured  out  on  an  hourly  basis.  "Kilowatts"  and 
"kilowatt  hours"  were  a  refinement  quite  unknown  then  to 
the  art,  the  customers  or  the  dictionaries.  The  total  reached 
was  then  compared  with  the  bill  rendered  by  the  Company. 
One  likes  to  think  of  the  great  Morgan,  dealing  in  millions, 
thus  putting  a  new  meter  on  test,  to  check  it  up.  The  re- 
sults of  the  first  month  revealed  an  apparent  overcharge. 
Mr  Morgan  chuckled.  Edison  took  it  quite  serenely  and  sug- 
gested giving  the  little  beggar  another  chance.  Once  more 
the  same  thing  happened,  and  the  chuckle  became  a  broad 
grin;  and  E  H  Johnson  didn't  drop  in  quite  so  often  to  see 
his  dear  friend,  J  Hood  Wright.  Then  Edison  went  "sleuth- 
ing" himself.  He  inspected  the  Drexel,  Morgan  offices  care- 
fully— the  wires  and  fixtures  critically — looked  over  the 
hourly  records,  and  then  asked  who  did  the  chores  after  dark. 
He  was  told  that  the  janitor — really  a  very  excellent  chap- 
cleaned  up  the  place.  The  janitor  was  sent  for  and  when 
inquiry  was  made  as  to  the  light  he  used  in  mopping  up  the 

61 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

floors,  pointed  to  a  central  fixture  carrying  ten  lamps.  He  had 
made  no  record  of  its  nightly  use — hadn't  been  asked  to. 
Told  to  make  note  every  night  of  his  use  of  it  during  a  month, 
he  did  so;  and  when  the  next  bill  came  in,  it  was  found  that 
the  meter  had  registered  within  a  very  small  fraction  the 
actual  lamphour  consumption  as  computed  from  the  cards. 
The  joke  was  on  Mr  Morgan,  who  became  a  highly  en- 
thusiastic advocate  of  a  meter  that  could  so  much  more 
satisfactorily  stand  interrogation  than  others  who  came  after 
the  financier's  money. 

In  the  very  early  days  Edison  liked  to  figure  that  chemical 
uses  would  furnish  him  with  many  customers,  even  to  the 
extent  of  causing  the  establishment  of  such  plants  next 
door — a  curious  anticipation  of  what  has  taken  place  since 
Niagara  and  other  great  water  powers  have  been  subjected 
to  the  electric  yoke.  He  was  rather  pleased  over  one  un- 
expected confirmation  of  his  ideas,  when  Chinnock  went  to 
him  one  day  and  announced  that  he  had  picked  up  a  new 
customer  for  the  equivalent  of  250  lights.  "I  said,  'What  for?' 
'He  has  a  place  down  here  in  a  top  loft,  and  has  got  two 
hundred  and  fifty  barrels  of  'rotgut  whiskey.'  He  puts  a 
lamp  down  in  the  barrel  and  lights  it  up — and  it  ages"  the 
whiskey!'  I  met  Chinnock  several  weeks  after  and  asked 
'How  is  the  whiskey  man  getting  along?'  'Oh!  it's  all  right; 
he  is  paying  his  bill.  It  fixes  the  whiskey,  and  takes  all  the 
shudder  right  out  of  it.'  "  The  idea  or  process  was  patented 
afterwards. 

In  these  modern  times  no  set  of  men  watch  the  weather 
reports  more  anxiously  than  central  station  operators.  The 
New  York  Edison  Company  has  long  had  also  a  system  of 
direct  meteorological  observers  scanning  the  horizon  as  do 
fire  wardens  in  the  forest  reserves.  But  when  "old  Pearl 
Street"  went  into  action  that  method  was  as  unknown  as 
military  scouting  by  aeroplane.  Edison  took  on  a  large  con- 
tract with  the  Stock  Exchange,  and  then  came  the  anxiety 

62 


INTRODUCTION  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

as  to  what  might  happen  if  a  big  thunderstorm  suddenly 
rolled  up  out  of  the  West  on  one  of  the  dog  days  and  the 
plant  should  be  staggered  by  an  overload.  The  expected  hap- 
pened. Edison  says:  "We  had  an  idea  like  a  steam  gauge, 
called  an  amperemeter,  to  indicate  the  amount  of  current 
going  out.  I  was  up  at  Sixty-five  Fifth  Avenue  one  after- 
noon. A  sudden  black  cloud  came  up,  and  I  telephoned  to 
Chinnock  and  asked  him  about  the  load.  He  said,  'We  are  up 
to  the  muzzle  and  everything  is  running  all  right.'  By  and  by 
it  became  so  thick  we  couldn't  see  across  the  street.  I  tele- 
phoned again  and  felt  something  would  happen,  but  for- 
tunately it  did  not.  I  said  to  Chinnock,  'How  is  it?'  He  re- 
plied: 'Everything  is  red-hot  and  the  amperemeter  has  made 
seventeen  revolutions!' ' 

To  tell  the  truth,  both  the  Stock  Exchange  and  Morgan's 
did  "go  off  the  system"  about  this  time  for  another  reason. 
Fuses  were  the  "foxes  in  the  vines"  in  those  days.  The  fuses 
used  in  the  street  underground  junction  boxes  were  first 
tested  with  great  care  at  the  Edison  Machine  Works,  in  the 
open  air;  but  when  they  were  placed  in  the  street  "catch 
boxes,"  which  were  very  small,  the  fuse  capacity  was  reduced 
to  one-half  or  less  on  account  of  the  accumulating  heat  in 
the  confined  space.  The  startling  result  was  that  the  fuses 
on  the  feeder  at  this  vital  point  in  the  "Street"  near  Broad, 
"blew."  Within  a  few  minutes  all  the  feeders  supplying  the 
entire  network  had  followed  suit,  and  that  part  of  the  sys- 
tem "lay  down."  All  the  lights  were  out!  To  aid  in  testing  out 
and  finding  how  matters  stood,  Bradley  and  Wheeler  at  once 
connected  up  two  spare  feeders  not  in  use,  disconnected  at 
Pearl  Street,  and  then  they  gradually  brought  up  the  po- 
tential until  a  dull  red  light  was  thrown  all  over  the  First 
District.  Encouraged  by  this  partial  emergence  from  total 
eclipse  agitated  directors,  who  had  reached  the  plant  post- 
haste, insisted  vehemently  that  the  pressure  be  fully  restored. 
Anything  to  prove  the  new  system  was  all  right!  This  order 

63 


THOMAS  A  EDISON  IN  HIS  LABORATORY 

From  an  instantaneous  photograph  taken  specially  for  Frank  Leslie's  Illustrated  Newspaper 


INTRODUCTION  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

was  of  course  obeyed,  with  the  natural  result  that  the  two 
spare  feeders  blew  up  in  turn.  Nothing  was  left  to  do  but 
go  around  in  the  pouring  tropical  rain,  open  all  the  catch 
boxes,  and  fuse  again  all  the  feeders — a  nice  clean  little  opera- 
tion that  took  several  hours — when  fortunately  most  of  the 
downtown  New  Yorkers  had  gone  home.  Some  scapegoat 
was  needed.  The  Company  issued  its  regrets  stating  that 
the  guilty  employee  had  been  "fired"  for  his  carelessness. 
He  had.  Wheeler  was  at  once  made  electrical  engineer  of  the 
Edison  Tube  Works  by  John  Kruesi,  installing  the  under- 
ground mains  at  Fall  River,  Mass,  where  a  little  block  light- 
ing service  was  started  in  April,  1882.  And  then,  to  make  sure 
the  punishment  fitted  the  crime,  Wheeler  was  "sent  up  the 
River"  to  Newburgh  by  Frank  S  Hastings,  treasurer  of  the 
parent  company,  who  was  very  proud  of  the  fine  little  show 
plant  being  installed  there  and  had  called  for  a  competent 
man  to  superintend  the  work  and  run  the  plant. 
*  Speaking  of  fuses,  this  incident  recalls  the  fact  that  during 
the  first  year  of  incandescent  lighting  in  New  York  City 
fuses  werejapplied  to  only  one  le%  of  each  circuit:  the  "cut 
out  blocks"  that  receive  the  screw  plugs  containing  the  fuses^ 
being  arranged  for  one  fuse  only.  It  was  learned  from  sad 
experience  that  often  a  fuse  would  be  on  one  leg  of  a  circuit 
in  one  place,  and  in  some  other  place  requiring  a  fuse,  would 
be  on  the  other  leg.  Hence,  when  the  opposite  legs  were  acci- 

/      dentally  grounded,  a  "short  circuit"  was  produced,  there  be- 

\      ing  no  protection.  Then,  for  the  first  time,  fuse  blocks  were 

I      made  with  two  fuses. 

Another  mishap  of  the  kind  that  threw  Wall  Street  into 

I  temporary  gloom  was  more  humorous  and  less  serious  in 
N^nature,  though  typical.  "One  afternoon,"  says  Edison,  "after 
our  Pearl  Street  started,  a  policeman  rushed  in  and  told  us 
to  send  an  electrician  at  once  up  to  the  corner  of  Ann  and 
Nassau  Streets — some  trouble.  Another  man  and  I  went  up. 
We  found  an  immense  crowd  of  men  and  boys  there  and  in 

6s 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

:he  adjoining  streets — a  perfect  jam.  There  was  a  leak  in  one 
[of  our  junction  boxes,  and  on  account  of  the  cellars  extending 
under  the  street  the  top  soil  had  become  insulated.  Hence, 
by  means  of  this  leak,  powerful  currents  were  passing  through 
this  layer  of  moist  earth.  When  a  horse  went  to  pass  over  it, 
he  would  get  a  very  severe  shock.  When  I  arrived,  I  saw 
coming  along  the  street  a  ragman  with  a  dilapidated  old  horse, 
and  one  of  the  boys  told  him  to  go  over  on  the  other  side  of 
the  road,  which  was  the  place  where  the  current  leaked. 
When  the  ragman  heard  this,  he  took  that  side  at  once.  The 
moment  the  horse  struck  the  electrified  soil,  he  stood  straight 
up  in  the  air,  and  then  reared  again;  and  the  crowd  yelled, 
the  policeman  yelled;  and  the  horse  started  to  run  away. 
This  continued  until  the  crowd  got  so  serious  that  the 
policeman  had  to  clear  it  out,  and  we  were  notified  to  cut 
the  current  off.  We  got  a  gang  of  men,  cut  the  current  off  for 
several  junction  boxes  and  fixed  the  leak.  One  man  who  had 
seen  it  came  to  me  next  day  and  wanted  me  to  put  in  appa- 
ratus for  him  at  a  place  where  they  sold  horses.  He  said 
he  could  make  a  fortune  with  it,  because  he  could  get  old 
nags  in  there  and  make  them  act  like  thoroughbreds." 

On  October  i,  1882,  within  a  month  of  starting,  the  Com- 
pany had  59  customers,  and  on  December  i  it  had  203,  for 
whom  it  had  installed  5228  lamps  of  which  3144  were  then  in 
actual  service.  At  the  beginning  of  1883,  it  had  231  customers, 
and  as  already  noted,  the  regular  collection  of  revenue  for 
service  began  in  February.  But  the  first  bill  for  lighting  based 
on  Edison  meter  readings  was  collected  on  January  18,  1883, 
from  the  Ansonia  Brass  &  Copper  Company,  Cliff  Street, 
for  $50.40.  After  the  lapse  of  a  year,  September  i,  1883,  tne 
system  had  455  customers  for  its  service,  and  no  fewer  than 
11,192  lamps  had  been  installed,  although  only  8218  were  in 
operation.  During  that  year  the  Company  lost  $4,457.50; 
but  in  1884  the  deficit  was  turned  into  a  handsome  profit  of 
$35,554.49  although  the  Company  did  not  pay  its  first 

66 


INTRODUCTION  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

quarterly  dividend  of  i  per  cent  until  August  i,  1885. 
Perhaps  the  increase  in  the  life  of  the  lamps  had  something 
to  do  with  that,  as  the  average  of  400  hours  in  January  had 
risen  to  914  hours  in  November.  A  year  later,  the  Company 
had  reached  a  life  of  1347  hours  per  lamp.  Moreover,  in  1884 
began  the  remarkable  diversification  of  electric  service,  now 
one  of  the  leading  phenomena  of  central  station  operation— 
for  fan  motors  went  on  the  circuits,  and  various  motors  were 
introduced  for  industrial  uses.  That  same  year,  1884,  the 
great  initial  work  begun  by  Edison,  in  1882,  in  familiarizing 
the  public  with  the  idea  of  universal  electrical  application 
for  everybody,  was  rounded  out  by  the  first  American  Elec- 
trical Exhibition  at  Philadelphia. 

This  is  a  natural  point  of  pause  to  consider  briefly  a  few 
of  the  essential  auxiliary  inventions  that  went  with  the  devel- 
opment and  demonstration  of  the  fundamental  Edison  cen- 
tral station  service.  For  the  exterior  system,  underground, 
were  required  the  conductors,  manhole  boxes,  T-joints, 
service  boxes,  service  switches  and  fuses,  connectors,  and 
special  kinds  of  wire.  For  the  use  of  the  customer,  indoors, 
were  needed  all  kinds  of  fixtures,  beginning  with  the  lamp 
socket,  and  running  the  gamut  through  meters,  minor 
switches,  fuse  blocks,  electroliers,  insulating  joints  and  meth- 
ods of  interior  wiring, — now  all  so  generally  standardized 
that  the  younger  customers  of  The  New  York  Edison  Com- 
pany can  have  no  idea  of  the  primitive  character  of  much  of 
the  early  material  or  the  welter  of  maddening  confusion 
attendant  on  the  effort  of  nearly  every  arc  lighting  company 
to  take  on  incandescent  lighting.  As  soon  as  Edison  had 
shown  its  feasibility  and  desirability,  such  companies  were 
eager  supporters  of  his  more  or  less  ambitious  rivals.  It  is 
quite  impossible  to  do  more  than  "characterize"  all  such 
advance,  but  the  essential  facts  belong  to  this  story  because 
so  much  of  it  was  the  work  of  the  old  Edison  Electric  Illu- 
minating Company,  directly,  or  was  tried  out  by  the  parent 

6? 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


OLD  EDISON 
CHEMICAL  METER 


company  on  the  New  York  circuits.  A  great  deal  of  such 
important  detail  invention  is  summed  up,  for  example,  in  the 
unpublished  record  of  what  Mr  Luther  Stieringer  did  for  the 
"ceiling  block"  and  the  "insulating  joint/'  In  1882-3  there 
were  no  such  things  as  fixture  insulators.  If  the  incandescent 
lamp  was  introduced  any  where,  it  was  the  practice  to  twine 
aridjiape  the  wire$  pn  the  old  gas  chandeliers  and  then  con- 
nect them  with  the  lamp  sockets  screwed  under  the  gas 
burners.  Ouf  of  that  grew  the  "combination  fixture,"  which 
survives  usefully  to  this  day.  There  were  frequent  fireworks 
in  a  thunderstorm  with  snapping  sparks  between  the  chande- 
lier and  the  festooning  wires,  and  one  vivid  display  which 
scared  nervous  guests  out  of  a  hotel  and  led  Stieringer  to 
devise  the  insulating  joint — which  effectually  separated  the 
two  services  and  was  immediately  adopted. 

Stieringer,  who  was  a  grand  old  gas  plumber  sublimated  to 
the  tenth  degree  and  an  Edison  loyalist  raised  by  enthusiastic 
admiration  to  the  hundredth,  gave  the  art  a  great  gift  in  his 

68 


INTRODUCTION  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

"ceiling  block."  The  idea  of  the  use  of  the  flexible  cord  as  an 
accessory  of  the  application  of  the  incandescent  lamp  is 
really  older  than  the  commercial  lamp,  while  the  flexible 
cord  itself  is  none  other  than  our  ancient  friend  the  flexible 
gas  tube,  with  two  wires  running  where  the  hole  used  to  be. 
At  first,  it  did  not  occur  to  practitioners  of  the  lighting  art 
to  borrow  the  flexible  cord  from  the  practice  of  the  district 
telegraph  and  telephone  people.  Stieringer,  encouraging 
this  notable  departure  from  rigid  pipe  and  the  use  of  molding 
strips,  himself  recalled  the  first  use  of  flexible  conductors  as 
pendants  from  a  ceiling  support  at  Edison's  own  house  at 
Menlo  Park,  where — used  to  provide  a  temporary  device — 
Stieringer  prepared  webbing  made  of  two  thicknesses  of  stout 
tape  between  which  the  conductors  were  placed.  An  improved 
form  of  this  was  used  in  J  Hood  Wright's  house  and  other 
places  in  New  York  City.  The  only  alternative  was  the  very 
light  telephone  cord,  as  the  ordinary  paraffin  wires  of  com- 
merce, known  with  grim  jocularity  as  "undertaker's,"  single 
or  double  in  form,  were  all  tabooed  by  reason  of  inflammabil- 
ity. Midway  in  1883,  Edison  approved  a  form  in  which  the 
lamp  conductors  were  wound  with  cotton,  wrapped  separately 
with  Kruesi  insulating  tape,  laid  side  by  side,  and  then  both 
wrapped  again  with  the  same  tape.  This  would  support  the 
lamp  and  socket  from  a  knot  above  some  rigid  support  like 
a  cleat  forming  part  of  a  device  on  the  ceiling.  Six  miles  of 
such  a  conductor  were  used  by  Byllesby  and  Stieringer  at 
the  Louisville  Exposition  of  1883;  but  while  the  experiment 
as  to  the  particular  conductor  was  not  repeated,  the  ceiling 
block  thus  came  into  the  art  to  continue,  and  to  be  perfected 
in  New  York  City,  where  refinements  were  gradually  added. 
The  truth  remains  that  at  first  the  "ceiling  block"  was  re- 
garded as  a  temporary  fixture  preluding  permanent  wiring 
and  the  adoption  of  chandeliers;  and  as  Stieringer  remarked 
sadly,  there  was  the  natural  opposition  of  "electrolier" 
manufacturers,  who  derived  no  profit  from  the  growth  of  the 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

cord  industry.  Besides,  "at  this  stage  of  the  development  of 
the  art,  nobody  would  assent  to  the  expense  or  recognize  the 
need  of  a  fusible  cutout  for  each  lamp."  The  present  writer 
has  had  the  pleasure  of  adding  to  the  Edison  lighting  museum., 
from  the  collection  left  him  by  Stieringer,  some  very  interest- 
ing examples  of  the  archaic  devices  with  which  the  citizen 
of  New  York  was  first  "hooked  up"  to  his  local  company. 
Odd  as  it  may  seem,  it  was  around  the  beginning  of  service 
by  the  Edison  Electric  Illuminating  Company  that  the  first 
attempt  of  any  kind  was  made  in  the  United  States  to  train 
electrical  artisans;  indeed  it  might  even  be  said  that  except 
for  what  Prof  W  A  Anthony  did  at  Cornell  University,  it 
was  the  first  American  effort  to  educate  electrical  engineers. 
Nor  did  Anthony  prepare  his  own  textbook  as  did  Edison, 
whose  manual  for  plant  operation  is  of  the  extremest  rarity 
and  correspondingly  valuable.  But  that  admirable  booklet 
was  not  enough,  and  one  of  the  difficulties  in  getting  the  First 
District  in  operation  lay  in  the  scarcity  of  skilled  workmen  to 
wire  the  buildings.  A  night  school  was  therefore  established 
at  Sixty-five  Fifth  Avenue,  of  which  Mr  E  H  Johnson, 
just  back  from  his  successes  in  England,  was  put  in  charge  as 
head,  with  Mr  C  L  Clarke  as  the  technical  instructor  in 
the  new  art.  Pupils  flocked  to  this  novel  academy,  not  only 
wiremen  and  bellhangers,  but  students  from  the  technical 
schools  and  colleges,  who  often  came  well  prepared  in  every 
way  but  electrically.  Even  the  great  Lord  Kelvin  said  in  those 
days  that  an  electrical  engineer  was  90  per  cent  mechanical 
engineer.  But  here  was  a  job  that  could  not  be  quite  recon- 
ciled with  that  point  of  view  and  the  necessities  of  the  New 
York  Edison  system.  So  at  it  went  Johnson  and  Clarke, 
chalk  in  hand  at  the  blackboard  and  with  all  the  appliances 
for  ocular  demonstration;  and,  moreover,  with  a  real  place 
on  the  payroll  waiting  for  the  competent  graduate.  Many  of 
these  original  New  York  Edison  students  hold  high  positions 
in  the  electrical  world  today,  and  the  list  of  members  of  the 


INTRODUCTION  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

New  York  Electrical  League,  or  the  roster  of  the  New  York 
Electrical  Contractors  Association,  contains  many  a  name 
first  to  appear  in  the  electrical  field  at  this  time  and  in  this 
way.  As  already  intimated  organized  electrical  engineering 
training  was  not  to  be  had;  Edison  was  the  first  American, 
with  Franklin  L  Pope,  in  1869,  to  advertise  himself  as  an 
"electrical  engineer,"  a  quite  unknown  profession.  It  was 
not,  however,  until  1884  that  the  American  Institute  of 
Electrical  Engineers  was  founded,  and  not  until  1888  that 
Columbia  University  of  New  York  City  took  up  the  new 
study  as  a  distinct  course. 

Another  aspect  of  the  new  departure  made  with  the  going 
into  operation  of  old  Pearl  Street  belongs  in  the  sociological 
relationships  with  education.  It  has  been  noted  that  among 
those  attending  the  simple  exercises  on  September  4,  1882, 
was  a  well-known  representative  of  the  New  York  Board  of 
Fire  Underwriters.  A  new  "hazard"  had  come  into  exis- 
tence. Careful  study  was  given  to  the  subject,  and  the  new 
regulations  and  requirements  were  embodied  in  the  rules 
formulated  by  that  Board  late  in  1881  and  adopted  formally 
January  12,  1882;  to  be  subsequently  endorsed  by  other 
boards  in  the  various  insurance  districts  of  the  country. 
The  National  rules  growing  out  of  all  this  preliminary  work 
and  experience,  compiled  in  1897,  govern  the  art  today. 

And  on  the  word  "Fire"  this  chapter  may  fitly  close,  al- 
though Pearl  Street  Station  was  not  dismantled  until  many 
years  later,  and  the  building  did  not  pass  out  of  the  hands  of 
The  New  York  Edison  Company  until  1895.  It  ran  in  very 
successful  operation  until  January  2,  1890,  when  it  was 
partially  destroyed  by  fire,  causing  the  only  serious  inter- 
ference with  service  to  customers  that  has  ever  occurred  in 
the  forty  years*  history  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company. 
But  not  a  customer  was  lost.  The  fire  was  due  to  a  heavy 
short  circuit  on  one  of  the  feeders  from  Pearl  Street  to  Fulton 
and  Nassau,  reacting  on  the  plant  itself.  Service  was  swiftly 

71 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

^ 

resumed.  Only  No  9  was  then  saved  of  all  the  "Jumbos,"  to 
be  a  venerated  relic.  The  boilers  had  better  luck,  as  told  be- 
fore. No  9  still  continued  to  function.  But  as  Clarke  put  it 
with  tears  in  his  words:  "The  glory  of  the  old  Pearl  Street 
Station,  unique  in  bearing  the  impress  of  Mr  Edison's 
personality,  and,  as  it  were,  constructed  with  his  own  hands, 
disappeared  in  the  flame  and  smoke  of  that  Thursday  morn- 
ing fire." 


CHAPTER  VI 

General  Service  Growth  of  The  New  York 
Edison  Company 

THE  present  writer  had  the  honor  of  preparing  for  the 
United  States  Census  Office  as  Special  Agent  the  first  re- 
port ever  made  to  any  government  on  the  subject  of  electrical 
apparatus  and  supplies,  but  it  was  not  done  until  twenty 
years  after  that  memorable  Fourth  of  September  at  old 
Pearl  Street.  It  dated  back  to  1880  as  the  base  year.  In  like 
manner  were  issued,  in  1905,  the  first  complete  central 
station  statistics  the  world  had  ever  seen  for  the  years  1890 
and  1902.  There  are  thus  furnished  points  of  comparison  for 
any  subsequent  growth  especially  as  these  highly  useful 
studies  by  the  Census  Office  are  made  under  Congressional 
mandate  every  five  years,  and  thus  serve  also  to  cross- 
section  not  only  the  other  industrial  and  manufacturing 
data  compiled  by  the  Government  but  to  help  explain  and 
interpret  the  decennial  statistics  of  population.  Looking 
over  the  data,  thus  summing  up  the  record  of  growth  for  the 
four  lustrums  of  their  expansive  system  of  public  utilities,  the 
members  of  the  National  Electric  Light  Association,  when 
enjoined  characteristically  at  Atlantic  City  last  May  by 
Secretary  Herbert  Hoover  to  "Electrify  America,"  could  not 
help  feeling  that  they  had  made  a  fairly  creditable  beginning 
in  that  direction. 

This  is  a  good  opportunity  to  use  a  few  of  the  figures  to 
illustrate  how  marvellous  has  been  the  growth  of  The  New 
York  Edison  Company  in  the  period  that  runs  back  as  far 
into  the  history  of  the  last  century  as  it  has  traveled  into  the 
twentieth.  On  later  pages  of  this  volume  are  given  under 
several  leading  heads  the  chief  items  of  its  growth  in  service 
from  1882  to  the  present  year.  Now,  in  1880,  the  total  capital 

73 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

•s 

applied  to  electrical  manufacturing  in  the  United  States  was 
only  $1,509,758.  That  year  came  almost  concurrently  the 
great  advances  in  the  introduction  of  telephony  and  electric 
lighting,  with  the  arc — but  there  were  still  no  incandescent 
lamps.  In  1890,  the  capital  employed  had  jumped  to  almost 
exactly  $19,000,000  and  in  1900  it  reached  $83,130,943,  a 
growth  that  even  the  automobile  industry,  which  electricity 
first  put  on  its  feet,  around  1900,  might  regard  with  respect. 
Turning  to  the  Census  Office  data  of  1902,  for  central  sta- 
tions, it  is  found  that  in  1890  the  139  in  New  York  State  had 
cost  $31,183,618  and  that  out  of  their  total  income  from  all 
sources,  of  $4,174,534,  no  less  than  $2,272,374  was  derived 
from  arc  lighting;  while  incandescent  lighting  yielded  only 
$1,585,834,  and  the  motor  current  sold  was  worth  only 
$102,754.  In  1902  the  effect  of  the  enormous  revolution 
caused  by  Edison  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  out  of  the  income  of 
256  stations  in  New  York  State  of  $16,854,839,  arc  lighting 
was  but  $4,944,575  while  that  from  incandescent  lighting  was 
nearly  twice  as  much,  or  $7,976,232,  to  which  should  be 
added  motor  service,  all  practically  done  from  "Edison" 
circuits,  yielding  a  further  income  of  $2,396,046.  To  that, 
moreover,  should  be  added  a  very  large  part,  if  not  ali,  of 
the  income  from  miscellaneous  service,  namely  $1,537,986 
and  some  portion  of  the  arc  lighting.  The  extraordinary  fact 
remains  that  in  ten  years  the  service  from  other  than  "Edi- 
son" circuits  had  fallen  from  about  55  per  cent  of  the  total 
income  to  less  than  25  per  cent.  Such  figures  are  graphic, 
and  become  even  more  startling  when  taken  on  the  larger 
view  of  the  country  as  a  whole  and  over  the  whole  period 
since  the  New  York  Edison  system  modestly  started  out  to 
prove  that  the  young  inventor  of  Menlo  Park  was  right. 

The  arc  light,  not  available  for  interior  lighting  except  in 
large  spaces  where  the  glare  and  flicker  might  be  more  bear- 
able, soon  established  itself  on  the  streets  and  highways  of 
America.  Radical  improvements  in  methods  of  operation, 

74 


GENERAL  SERVICE  GROWTH 

and  in  material  used,  minimized  all  the  earlier  objections  to 
it,  save  that  of  lack  of  subdivision. 

But  the  statistics  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company  tell 
something  of  a  desuetude  that  began  with  the  iconoclastic 
onslaught  dating  from  September  4,  1882.  Taking  1913  as 
perhaps  the  best  year  to  regard  as  the  close  of  the  epoch 
when,  as  involuntary  residuary  legatee,  the  Company  had 
gathered  up  the  fragments  of  the  old  arc  lighting  companies, 
it  is  seen  that  on  December  31  of  that  year  it  operated  no 
fewer  than  35,617  arcs.  At  the  moment  these  words  were 
penned,  July  15,  1922,  only  9435  arcs  remained  connected 
to  the  Company's  circuits.  Edison  had  himself  tried  to 
inaugurate  such  a  change  soon  after  Pearl  Street  started,  but 
though  he  did  not  succeed  at  the  moment  the  relentless  march 
of  progress  has  obviously  brought  the  process  very  nearly  to 
the  finale.  In  1919  the  total  value  of  arc  lamps  made  in 
America  in  round  figures  was  but  $606,000  while  that  of 
incandescent  lamps  was  $57,646,000! 

Stationary  motors  constitute  the  only  other  service  com- 
parable with  the  arc  and  the  incandescent  lamps  in  longevity 
as  part  of  the  New  York  Edison  system.  In  the  early  days  of 
Pearl  Street,  a  few  small  series  motors  to  be  run  on  arc  cir- 
cuits or  by  batteries  were  on  the  market.  The  business  was 
utterly  trivial,  and  the  method  of  operating  a  power  motor  in 
series  with  a  lot  of  "2000  candle  power"  arc  lights  might  well 
be  considered  hazardous.  But  the  Edison  system  obviously 
"opened  the  door  to  China,"  although  it  was  not  until  the 
end  of  the  first  decade  of  New  York  service  that  the  capacity 
of  direct  current  motors  receiving  Edison  current  reached 
3807  horsepower.  In  1902  it  had  already  increased  to  62,377 
horsepower  and  then  in  the  early  years  of  this  century  came 
a  tremendous  jump  to  no  less  than  392,704  horsepower  in 
1912.  The  present  year,  on  June  30,  saw  that  capacity 
doubled  to  the  really  imposing  figure  of  790,000  horsepower. 
No  attempt  will  be  made  here  to  enumerate  the  industries 

75 


GENERAL  SERVICE  GROWTH 

in  which  such  electric  power  is  utilized.  It  would  be  a  very 
easy  task  to  count  up  the  unelectrified  trades  and  crafts 
among  the  32,626  manufacturing  establishments  of  Greater 
New  York. 

But  that  is  only  one  aspect  of  the  power  subject.  The 
American  housewife  has  been  confronted  by  two  dishearten- 
ing phenomena — the  increased  cost  of  living  and  the  de- 
creased supply  of  domestic  help,  and  the  dispute  is  still  on  as 
to  whether  the  world  can  get  back  to  normalcy  in  its  price 
ratios,  or  whether  the  Great  War  has  not  marked  definitely 
one  of  those  stages  in  economic  relationships,  or  financial  con- 
dition, that  leaves  the  old  units  of  value  shifted  to  a  new  bed 
like  the  dislocated,  ever-rising  strata  of  the  earth.  Anyhow, 
in  this  grim  age  of  grinding  upheavals,  the  one  fact  stands 
out  that  electric  service  is  pretty  much  the  only  thing  whose 
cost  has  really  gone  down,  relatively,  to  the  benefit  of  the 
public,  as  compared  with  advances  in  the  general  cost  of 
living.  Some  recent  curves  that  show  the  enormous  increase 
in  the  sale  of  the  three  chief  domestic  electric  conveniences 
may  be  associated  with  and  reflect  the  decline  in  the  immigra- 
tion of  women  into  this  country  from  Europe. 

The  statistics  given  on  later  pages  do  not  differentiate 
all  this  domestic  supply  from  the  industrial,  nor  do  they  in 
any  way  touch  on  the  saving  and  convenience  to  the  housewife 
of  the  numerous  electric  appliances  or  the  wonderful  allevia- 
tion afforded  to  all  New  Yorkers  the  year  around  by  the  fan 
motor,  now  so  ingeniously  contrived  that  it  can  "blow  hot 
and  cold."  No  man  living  can  tell  how  many  millions  of  fan 
motors  are  in  use  in  the  world,  but  on  Manhattan  Island 
their  busy  hum  drowns  that  of  the  not  more  ubiquitous  mos- 
quito these  hot  summer  days  and  makes  the  town  as  breezy 
as  Manhattan  Beach. 

Fortunately,  the  Company's  statistics  do  reveal  the  story 
of  the  use  of  electricity  for  heating  and  cooking.  It  is  seen 
that  not  until  the  last  century  was  a-dying  did  any  record 

77 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

appear  of  current  sold  by  the  Company  for  heating  and  then  it 
represented  only  86  kilowatts.  In  1896-7,  the  inventor  Hada- 
way  installed  an  electric  range  in  the  Fifth  Avenue  mansion 
of  Andrew  Carnegie,  and  that  wholly  practicable  equipment 
set  the  ball  rolling;  although  very  few  could  then  see  in  it 
more  than  an  expensive  toy  for  the  wealthy  customer.  Not 
until  1907  was  the  sale  boosted  to  1000  kilowatts.  At  the 
present  moment,  fifteen  years  later,  the  use  of  electricity  for 
heating  is  distinctively  identified  to  the  amount  of  16,500 
kilowatts  for  1922;  and  anyone  who  attends  the  Electrical 
Exposition  this  year  will  have  an  opportunity  to  see  how 
small  a  beginning  that  is,  in  view  of  the  perfection  and  pro- 
fusion of  the  heat  devices  already  obtainable.  Let  it  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  only  satisfactory  picture  of  the  coming 
City  Beautiful,  lying  between  the  Statue  of  Liberty  and  the 
Hudson  Palisades,  is  that  wherein  no  fuel  is  burned  save  by 
gas  works  and  central  stations  on  its  very  outer  edges,  and 
where  for  a  landlord  to  make  smoke  will  be  a  grave  mis- 
demeanor. 

Which  brings  us  gracefully  to  the  electric  automobile  work 
of  The  New  York  Edison  Company,  under  whose  fostering 
auspices  some  years  ago,  in  1899,  was  held  the  first  electric 
automobile  parade  ever  seen.  It  seems  but  yesterday  that  Mr 
Isaac  L  Rice  was  inviting  friends  to  take  a  ride  around  in  his 
electric,  the  only  one  in  town;  while  over  in  Brooklyn  Mr  A 
L  Riker,in  1894,  was  building  the  first  electric  4-wheeler  that 
ever  ran  on  New  York's  streets.  In  1902,  the  New  York 
Edison  system  supplied  only  1386  kilowatt  hours  for  charg- 
ing storage  batteries,  practically  all  for  automobiles,  but  by 
December  31,  1912,  the  service  had  risen  to  12,983  kilowatt 
hours.  In  1914,  the  Committee  on  Electric  Vehicles  of  the 
Ohio  Electric  Light  Association  gave  authoritatively  some 
very  interesting  data  as  to  vehicle  development  and  stated 
that  New  York  City  then  had  498  passenger  or  private 
electrics  and  1700  commercial,  although  the  total  compared 

78 


GENERAL  SERVICE  GROWTH 

unfavorably  with  that  of  Chicago  which  then  had  no  fewer 
than  3136.  There  has  been  a  considerable  advance  recently, 
and  1921  showed  a  storage  battery  service  from  Edison  cir- 
cuits of  31,500  kilowatts,  but  the  fact  remains  that  of  late 
years  the  exploitation  of  the  electric  vehicle  in  New  York 
City  has  not  been  in  the  passenger  field  but  very  heavily  in 
that  of  delivery  wagons  and  trucks,  as  exemplified  by  the 
American  Railway  Express,  which  in  New  York  and  through- 
out the  country  is  operating  no  less  a  fleet  than  1258  electric 
trucks.  The  advocacy  of  the  electric  vehicle  by  The  New  York 
Edison  Company,  its  constant  and  persistent  pusher,  was 
never  more  energetic  than  today,  while  as  example  is  better 
than  precept  it  utilizes  in  its  own  transactions  a  fleet  of  no 
fewer  than  105  electric  conveyances  of  various  types. 

Concurrently  with  the  introduction  of  the  Edison  system 
came  the  modern  skyscraper,  whose  erection,  existence  and 
operation  would  be  impossible  without  the  electric  appliances 
and  utilities.  Imagine,  if  one  can,  all  the  communications  ex- 
changed in  a  business  day  in  New  York  by  telephone,  wire- 
less or  telegraph  being  handled  by  postmen  and  messenger 
boys!  The  famous  old  Tower  Building  on  lower  Broadway 
was  but  eight  stories  high,  but  it  had  steel  framework  and 
passenger  elevators  making  it  the  true  lineal  ancestor  of  all 
the  colossal  structures  that  have  since  made  New  Yorkers 
cliff-dwellers  either  at  business  or  in  the  home.  What  Otis, 
Sprague,  See  and  others  have  done  to  facilitate  the  vertical 
travel  in  modern  cities  cannot  here  be  discussed,  but  it  must 
be  noted,  if  merely  in  passing,  that  mighty  few  of  about  1000 
tall  buildings  in  New  York  City  are  without  the  electric 
elevator,  as  to  which  Edison  was  very  anxious  even  when 
he  began  work  at  Pearl  Street,  and  now  he  seems  destined  to 
abolish  "walkups"  and  stair  climbing  altogether. 

Discussion  of  the  incandescent  lamp  itself  and  its  use  in 
New  York  City,  as  part  of  the  general  growth  of  the  Com- 
pany, has  been  reserved  as  a  kind  of  climax.  It  was  not  until 

79 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


BROADWAY  AND  FULTON  STREET,  1886 

1901  that  the  Company  reached  its  first  million  of  lamps  con- 
nected. All  of  these  were  of  the  Edison  carbon  filament  type, 
although  during  1892  the  process  was  resorted  to  of  treating 
the  filaments  by  depositing  on  them  a  dense  coating  of 
graphitic  carbon,  insuring  a  uniform  cross  section  throughout 
the  length,  increasing  life,  and  decreasing  the  black  deposit 
on  the  glass  of  the  bulb.  Then,  in  1894,  came  the  oval  loop  or 
"squirted"  filament  with  a  short  central  anchor  to  support 
the  loop,  whereby  the  tip-end  candle  power  of  the  lamp  was 
better  than  doubled,  with  more  uniform  distribution  of  light, 
in  all  directions.  A  still  more  important  improvement  was  the 
introduction  of  the  chemical  process,  by  which  all  the  final 
traces  of  air  were  removed  from  the  bulb.  About  190^  came 
the  "Gem"  filament,  of  ordinary  carbon  subjected  to  the 
intense  heat  of  the  electric  furnace,  increasing  the  refractory 
quality  of  the  filament,  enhancing  the  life,  and  raising  the 

80 


GENERAL  SERVICE  GROWTH 

efficiency  to  1^/2  watts  per  candle  from  the  old  original  3.10. 
Then  came  all  the  wonderful  series  of  metallic  filaments,  hark- 
ing back  to  the  work  done  ab  initio  by  Edison  and  his  many 
brilliant  colaborers.  This  series,  includingplatinum,  tantalum, 
osmium,  and  other  rare  metals,  now  has  its  leading  repre- 
sentative in  tungsten.  The  filaments  of  this,  at  first  made 
from  powder  or  paste,  and  now  wire  drawn  and  used  in 
globes  filled  with  some  inert  gas,  are  the  furthest  advance  il- 
lustrated today  on  the  New  York  Edison  circuits,  in  this 
modern  art  of  incandescent  lamp  manufacture.  Practically 
the  whole  of  the  enormous  gain  thus  briefly  set  forth  has  gone 
to  the  lamp  user.  What  the  change  amounts  to  may  be  in- 
ferred from  the  1922  report  of  Mr  Frank  W  Smith,  chairman 
of  the  Lamp  Committee  of  the  National  Electric  Light  Asso- 
ciation. He  gives  the  total  sales  of  tungsten  filament  lamps 
made  in  the  United  States  for  the  year  1921  at  160  millions, 
although  it  is  also  estimated  that  it  reached  202  millions  the 
year  before.  There  were  only  6  million  carbon  filament  lamps, 
"so  that  the  early  disappearance  of  the  carbon  lamp  may  be 
looked  for."  At  115  volts  pressure,  35  per  cent  of  the  lamps 
were  called  for,  28  per  cent  at  the  old  standard  1 10  volts,  and 
23.6  per  cent  at  120  volts.  Of  all  this  wonderful  160  millions, 
20.6  per  cent  were  of  the  gas  filled  type.  As  to  size,  these 
lamps  were  21  per  cent  of  25  watts  size,  but  the  largest  num- 
ber 21.6  per  cent  were  40  watts,  and  no  fewer  than  13  per 
cent  were  60  watts,  showing  that  the  American  eye  has  been 
educated  up  to  a  demand  for  much  higher  interior  illumina- 
tion than  was  acceptable  forty  years  ago.  To  sum  up  all  this, 
it  may  be  stated  that  the  Company  estimates  its  circuits  in 
New  York  to  be  carrying  at  this  moment  just  about  ten 
million  incandescent  lamps  of  all  kinds.  As  to  Christmas  tree 
lamps,  and  decorative  advertising  work  of  all  kinds  that  the 
lamp  does — that  must  all  be  left  to  the  reader's  own  daily 
observation. 

Of  course,   in   a  sense,   every  inhabitant  of  Manhattan 

81 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

Island  is  directly  or  indirectly  a  customer  or  beneficiary  of 
the  New  York  Edison  service.  Up  to  1900,  the  Company  kept 
an  exact  tab  on  its  actual  customers  billed,  and  every  one  had 
his  individual  meter.  About  twenty  years  ago,  there  were  over 
16,000  customers,  but  ten  years  later  the  number  of  meters 
set  was  169,000,  giving  roughly  the  number  of  patrons.  On 
June  30,  1922,  there  were  on  the  New  York  and  United 
Edison's  systems  no  fewer  than  475,000  electric  meters,  which 
registered  the  total  consumption  of  an  installation  of 
25,000,000  units,  of  50  watts,  if  it  were  all  reduced  to  cor- 
responding equivalents. 

In  closing  this  altogether  inadequate  summary  of  the  way 
in  which  the  New  York  Edison  system  functions  for  the 
millions  for  whom  it  is  in  "readiness  to  serve"  all  around  the 
clock  every  day,  note  must  be  made  of  one  quite  interesting 
feature.  Over  half  of  the  6000  central  stations  of  the  country 
deal  in  electrical  apparatus  and  supplies,  or  do  the  necessary 
wiring  for  a  newly-connected  customer.  Some  years  ago,  when 
it  was  a  sheer  necessity  to  continue  to  carry  out  contracts  for 
wiring  installation,  the  Company  maintained  a  large  and 
successful  wiring  department.  Today  it  neither  wires  nor 
does  it  trade,  although  its  main  showrooms  and  numerous 
branch  offices  are  literal  expositions  of  all  that  is  latest  and 
best  in  appliances,  aiding  judgment  in  selection,  guiding 
taste,  and  settling  many  questions  which  even  in  these  days 
when  every  housewife  talks  electricity  glibly  and  every 
schoolboy  has  pat  the  slang  of  radio,  require  the  skillful 
decision  of  the  expert.  The  wiring  contractors  of  the  city  are 
among  its  best  friends,  for  it  ever  creates  new  opportunity — 
electricity's  other  name. 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Successive  Edison  Stations  on 
Manhattan  Island 

IN  a  lecture  entitled  "A  Story  of  Three  Decades" delivered, 
in  1 9 1 2,  before  the  employees  of  the  Brooklyn  Edison  Com- 
pany, Mr  Samuel  Insull  said:  "It  took  about  three  decades, 
thirty  years,  to  establish  the  commercial  value  of  gas.  Owing 
partly  to  the  differences  in  general  conditions  of  living,  and 
partly  to  the  better  original  invention,  it  took  but  one  decade 
to  establish  the  commercial  possibilities  of  the  electric  power 
and  electric  lighting  industry." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  his  dates  supporting  this  pregnant 
paragraph,  the  lecturer  referred  more  specifically  to  events 
clustering  around  1889,  when  the  first  Brooklyn  Edison 
station  went  into  operation.  It  was  the  year  when  Edison 
made  his  second  notable  exhibit  in  Paris,  and  when  at  the 
fruitful  Electrical  Congress  of  Paris  the  watt  was  authorita- 
tively defined  and  adopted  as  the  unit  of  electrical  energy. 
It  was  the  year  when  work  was  begun  on  the  first  real  power 
transmission  line  in  the  United  States,  scaling  the  Rockies, 
for  Telluride  mining  work  in  Colorado.  Such  a  date,  1889, 
obviously  serves  for  a  new  point  of  departure  from  the  period 
when  The  New  York  Edison  Company,  emerging  from  the  in- 
fluence of  the  governing  idea  of  its  small  districts,  plunged 
heavily  and  with  enormous  momentum  into  the  new  era  of 
steam  and  electrical  engineering  of  which  its  huge  plants  on 
Manhattan  Island  are  amongst  the  finest  exemplars,  and  in 
many  respects  the  typical  representatives  in  this  day  of  mass 
economics. 

Only  a  very  brief  review  can  here  be  made  of  the  engineer- 
ing policies  and  practices  embodied  in  The  New  York  Edison 
Company  stations  of  this  year  of  grace.  They  illustrate  at 

83 


COALING  APPARATUS  AND  BARGES  AT  THE  WATERSIDE  STATIONS 

Etching  by  E  Horter 


EDISON  STATIONS 

once  modern  refinements  in  intimate  details  of  operation  as 
well  as  the  revolutionary  methods  that  have  totally  recreated 
the  central  station  art  in  forty  years.  Necessarily,  attention 
will  be  paid  rather  to  the  new  ideas  and  inventions  than 
simply  to  the  higher  efficiencies  of  mere  tuning  up. 

Until  1890,  there  was  no  real  breaking  away  from  the 
earlier  traditions;  and  then  it  seemed  as  though  the  mere 
naming  of  the  new  unit  of  power  sufficed  to  turn  loose  on  the 
world  a  literal  Niagara  of  watts  and  kilowatts.  At  once 
came  a  swift  transition  in  both  the  steam  and  the  electrical 
fields,  and  for  the  central  station,  these  advances  were,  so  far 
as  the  public  was  concerned,  summed  up  in  radical  improve- 
ments in  the  incandescent  lamps  and  its  variants,  like  the 
mercury  tube;  the  introduction  of  the  electric  motor  and  the 
development  of  numerous  new  electrical  applications.  For 
the  central  station,  in  its  technical  organization,  the  new 
era  after  1890  comprised  rapid  perfection  of  compound,  triple 
and  quadruple  condensing  engines;  the  utilization  of  the 
storage  battery  for  a  gasometer  function;  the  use  of  the  ro- 
tary converter  and  the  converter  sub-station,  the  extended 
use  of  the  alternating  current  for  generation  and  distribution 
purposes;  and,  wherever  available,  the  economic  linking  in 
the  remote  water  powers  with  long  transmission  lines,  huge 
step-up  and  step-down  transformers,  and  higher  voltages  to 
rival  in  intensity  of  effect  the  very  artillery  of  the  heavens. 
The  pace  and  push  of  all  this  engineering  expansion  has 
been  rapid  indeed,  since  1890. 

And  yet,  seen  from  a  survey  of  the  growth  of  the  New  York 
Edison  system,  it  is  all  quietly  evolutional  rather  than  sensa- 
tionally spectacular,  and  tells  of  a  policy  steadily  pursued  to 
put  into  service  every  new  suggestion  or  help  to  try  out  the 
novel  proposition  in  which  may  lurk  the  germ  of  better  things. 
This  is  the  curious  aspect  of  Edison  and  all  his  works,  of  Edi- 
son and  all  his  colleagues.  For  example,  Edison  in  his  early 
New  York  work  laid  out  the  city  of  that  day  in  36  districts 


'THE  HEAVENLY  TWINS' 

Duane  Street  Station 


EDISON  STATIONS 

south  of  Fifty-ninth  Street,  beginning  with  the  one  around 
Pearl  and  Wall  Streets — each  district  to  be  self-centered  and 
to  be  dealt  with  as  a  market  gardener  cultivates  his  little 
acre  or  two.  Such  a  plan  was  the  very  antithesis  of  the  de- 
velopment of  series  arc  lighting  methods  with  overhead  cir- 
cuits, fed  from  one  "central  station"  miles  away;  and  yet 
Edison  was  "ragged"  for  such  marvelous  lack  of  caution  and 
sanity!  Now,  it  is  a  curious  study  to  say  the  least,  to  take  the 
list  given  elsewhere  in  this  volume,  of  sub-stations,  and  see 
how  that  very  selfsame  district  idea  has  been  worked  out 
and  closely  adhered  to,with  each  sub-station  center  of  its  own 
district  from  the  first  to  the  latest,  far  beyond  Fifty-ninth 
Street,  yet  all  tied  together  as  one  huge  network  and  all  fed 
with  energy  by  underground  circuits — source  and  circuits  as 
impregnable  to  disaster  as  human  ingenuity  can  make  them. 
Of  the  proposed  numerous  steam  power  plants,  barely  half- 
a-dozen  were  actually  built,  on  an  ascending  scale  of  mag- 
nitude. The  original  plan  of  such  small  stations  is  still  seen 
sadly  exemplified  in  London,  which  has  at  this  moment  prob- 
ably in  excess  of  fifty  generating  plants  for  the  electrical  sup- 
ply of  its  six  million  people — or  about  five  times  as  many 
plants  as  Greater  New  York.  The  objections  to  multiplicity 
of  steam  power  plants  in  a  modern  city  are  so  generally  recog- 
nized that  the  Edison  plan  warmly  approved  forty  years  ago 
would  not  even  be  suggested  today.  The  wonder  is  that  a 
sensitive  public  is  still  so  tolerant  of  large  isolated  plants 
within  the  municipal  borders  with  all  their  drawbacks  of 
coal  haulage,  ash  removal,  gas  and  smoke  creation,  excessive 
coal  consumption,  large  consumption  of  water  needed  for 
sanitary  and  fire  purposes,  and  other  disadvantages.  When 
Pearl  Street  was  laid  out,  steam  and  electrical  units  were  so 
painfully  small  that  a  few  hundred  horsepower  expressed 
their  capacity.  Even  up  to  the  time  when  the  Edison  Com- 
pany, in  1888,  erected  its  second  and  third  generating  plants 
at  West  Twenty-sixth  Street  and  West  Thirty-ninth  Street— 

8? 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

now  sub-stations — the  steam  engine  units  reached  a  maxi- 
mum of  only  200  horsepower.  It  was  not  until  Duane- 
Pearl  Street  equipment  was  reached  in  May,  1891,  that 
engines  above  1000  horsepower  were  introduced;  and  that 
plant  was  designed  for  ten  vertical  engines  of  2500  horse- 
power, each  with  a  pair  of  800  kilowatt  dynamos;  two  1250 
horsepower  engines  with  a  pair  of  400  kilowatt  dynamos; 
and  two  600  horsepower  engines,  each  with  a  pair  of  200 
kilowatt  dynamos.  Up  to  the  time  that  5000  horsepower 
hydro-electric  units  were  put  in  operation  at  Niagara  in  the 
autumn  of  1895,  no  alternating  current  generators — the  com- 
ing types — had  been  built  in  excess  of  1000  horsepower. 

Still  pursuing,  in  1892,  its  method  of  direct  current  genera- 
tion, the  Company  bought  for  its  new  station  at  Fifty-third 
Street  its  first  storage  battery  auxiliary,  an  imported  Cromp- 
ton-Howell  Battery  with  the  mgdest  capacity  of  2000  am- 
pere hours,  which  was  the  beginning  of  storage  battery  use 
in  connection  with  central  station  Edison  service  in  the 
United  States.  With  his  numerous  generating  plants,  closely 
tied  in,  Edison,  who  had  a  poor  opinion  of  the  storage  bat- 
teries of  the  early  eighties,  had  then  expressed  quite  epigram- 
matically  his  judgment  that  a  ton  of  coal  was  the  best  storage 
battery  on  the  market;  but  now,  again,  the  modified  condi- 
tions led  to  the  change  in  operating  practice.  It  is  quite  inter- 
esting to  note  that  in  1892,  on  December  15,  always  a  peak 
period  of  the  year,  the  maximum  load  in  the  downtown  dis- 
trict reached  21,000  amperes  or  45,000  lamps  of  16  candle 
power;  while  the  day  before,  the  newer  uptown  load  was  just 
about  the  same — 20,320  amperes. 

In  1895  the  Edison  Company  installed  the  first  steam  tur- 
bines to  go  into  central  station  service  in  America.  These 
were  imported  from  abroad  and  marked  the  beginning  of 
the  supersession  of  reciprocating  engine  generators  by  steam 
turbine  generators  in  this  country.  They  comprised  2-300 
horsepower  DeLaval  steam  turbines,  each  connected  to  two 


EDISON  STATIONS 

100  kilowatt  dynamos  arranged  for  Edison  connection,  one 
of  the  units  being  installed  in  the  then  new  and  "up  to  the 
minute"  Twelfth  Street  station  and  the  other  in  the  older 
Thirty-ninth  Street  station. 

The  next  date  that  stands  out  in  the  engineering  history  of 
the  New  York  Edison  system  is  that  of  resort  to  high  tension 
transmission  and  the  use  of  the  alternating  current  for  that 
purpose.  In  1896  an  experimental  station  of  this  nature  was 
installed  at  Seventy-second  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue  trans- 
mitting current  at  2400  volts  for  the  Manhattan  station,  foot 
of  Eightieth  Street  and  East  River,  to  be  followed  in  Novem- 
ber, 1898,  by  the  use  in  practical  work  of  such  a  method 
between  Duane  Street  and  Thirty-ninth  Street  stations. 
Using  the  existing  underground  ducts  on  Broadway,  using 
three-conductor  high  tension  cable,  direct  current  taken  off 
the  downtown  busbars  at  ordinary  voltage  was  transformed 
to  three-phase  alternating  current  by  rotary  converters, 
passed  through  static  transformers  to  raise  the  pressure,  and 
then  by  similar  apparatus  and  inverse  process  brought  back 
to  direct  current  at  ordinary  voltage  at  the  uptown  receiving 
end,  for  use  by  the  consumer,  he  was  unwitting  that  here  was 
the  ending  of  an  old  electrical  dispensation  and  the  beginning 
of  a  new,  on  Manhattan  Island. 

As  with  the  pioneer  arc  lamp,  one  more  illustration  is  now 
afforded  of  the  swift  and  enormous  changes  that  sweep  over 
the  modern  electrical  arts — in  the  supercession  of  the  con- 
tinuous, or  direct,  current  generator.  In  1917,  the  kilowatt 
capacity  of  direct  current  generators  in  American  central 
stations  was  only  about  5  per  cent  of  the  total.  That  year 
the  American  central  stations  generated  32,000,000,000  kilo- 
watt hours,  delivered  over  87,000  miles  of  high  tension  trans- 
mission lines.  The  voltage,  which  on  some  of  these  lines  is 
increased  for  transmission  up  to  more  than  150,000  volts,  is 
by  transformer  modulation  brought,  if  necessary,  to  no 
volts  in  lamp  or  motor  on  the  consumption  circuits. 


THOMAS  A  EDISON  VISITING  WATERSIDE  STATION— 1902 


EDISON  STATIONS 

It  is  obviously  a  most  tremendous  and  intriguing  chapter 
of  electrical  history  summed  up  in  these  few  facts,  but  that 
can  now  be  only  outlined  for  the  necessary  purposes  of  the 
story. 

Elsewhere  in  this  little  volume  are  given  a  few  simple  tables 
that  set  forth  in  some  detail  the  vast  generating  capacity  of 
the  Edison  Company  and  the  allied  United  Electric  Light 
&  Power  Company,  in  and  on  Manhattan,  as  well  as  the  sup- 
plementary and  auxiliary  apparatus  that  helps  to  make  serv- 
ice possible  and  cheap  besides  dependable  and  regular.  The 
area  thus  "electrified"  not  only  includes  the  central  22  square 
miles  of  New  York  County  and  20  of  Bronx,  but  through 
Allied  Companies  the  remaining  21  of  Brooklyn,  virtually 
all  of  Westchester's  448,  as  well  as  of  Queen's  121.  A  noble 
territory  crowded  with  some  7,000,000  of  the  richest  and 
most  enterprising  people  on  earth,  who  demand  a  service  that 
must  be  the  sine  qua  non  in  standard.  The  quality  through- 
out must  be  uniform,  whether  the  customer  is  some  importer 
down  on  Burling  Slip,  or  the  remotest  commuter,  who  must 
receive  his  unwearied  watt  fifty  miles  from  City  Hall.  More- 
over, a  considerable  portion  of  the  energy  generated  in  the 
plants  listed  is  availed  of  to  supplement  the  passenger  trans- 
portation systems  of  the  region;  and  one  sizeable  station 
taken  over  under  lease,  is  located  over  in  Jersey  City  for  the 
supply  of  the  Hudson  and  Manhattan  tubes  that  are  part 
of  the  "road  to  yesterday,"  for  persons  seeking  more  rest- 
ful quarters  than  the  Great  White  Way. 

The  totals  of  those  tables  are  impressive.  The  maximum 
kilowatt  capacity  exhibited  is  694,500  which  for  the  sake  of 
convenience  the  writer  will  hereafter  refer  to  as  600,000.  It  is 
easier  to  think  of  such  round  figures  in  relation  to  7,000,000 
population.  This  immense  generating  capacity  is  wholly 
steam  driven.  The  table  shows  also  the  rating  of  the  steam 
"turbos,"  and  incidentally  the  capacity  of  the  "Old  Guard," 
the  few  steam  engines  of  the  reciprocating  type  still  remain- 

91 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

*. 

ing  for  direct  current  dynamo  operation  in  the  Duane  Street 
station;  and  a  few  at  Kingsbridge  under  lease  for  alternating 
current.  Only  sixteen  engines  remaining  of  a  total  capacity 
around  40,000  kilowatts.  It  can  be  readily  seen  how  small  in 
the  output  of  a  year  in  a  system  of  700,000  kilowatt  capacity 
such  an  engine  capacity  is;  and  concurrently,  the  transition 
is  startlingly  set  forth,  from  the  old  method  of  steam  con- 
version into  electricity  by  reciprocating  engines  to  the  one 
now  all-prevailing  and  triumphant,  steam  turbine-genera- 
tors. 

Another  table  in  the  rear  of  the  text  gives  the  static  trans- 
former equipment  of  the  various  generating  plants — the 
"step-up"  apparatus  by  which  the  current  from  the  genera- 
tors is  increased  in  voltage  for  transmission  to  the  various 
sub-stations,  there  to  be  received  by  other  "step-down"  trans- 
formers and  converters  that  let  it  down  easily  to  lower  grades 
of  pressure  for  use  as  direct  current  over  a  large  part  of  the 
area,  or  as  alternating  current  at  convenient  consumption 
voltage  in  other  sectors.  Just  a  word,  however,  in  this  con- 
nection;— as  one  contemplates  these  massive  pieces  of 
apparatus  doing  an  immense  amount  of  real  hard  work  in 
silence  without  the  quiver  of  a  muscle,  one  sees  Rodin's 
colossal  Thinker,  and  recalls  the  fine  utterance  of  Mr  George 
Westinghouse,  in  1910,  before  his  fellow  engineers: — "As  an 
illustration  of  the  wonders  of  the  laws  of  Nature,  few  inven- 
tions or  discoveries  can  excel  the  static  transformer.  To  have 
discovered  how  to  make  an  inert  mass  of  metal  capable  of 
transforming  alternating  currents  of  100,000  volts  into  cur- 
rents of  any  required  lower  voltage  with  a  loss  of  only  a  trifle 
of  the  energy  so  transformed,  would  have  been  to  achieve 
enduring  fame.  The  facts  divide  this  honor  among  a  few,  the 
beneficiaries  will  be  tens  of  millions." 

Capacity  Sheet,  No  5,  in  the  Statistical  part  of  this  book, 
on  later  pages,  is  another  necessary  supplement  to  the  gen- 
erating table,  as  it  exhibits  the  vast  array  of  apparatus  re- 

92 


EDISON  STATIONS 

quired  to  manipulate  and  deliver  all  the  flood  of  current  as 
called  for  by  the  customers  of  the  Company — in  other  words, 
to  break  down  the  gigantic  wholesale  quantities  into  such 
retail  parts  that  no  resident  on  Manhattan  Island  or  the 
adjacent  territory  is  too  small  to  be  served.  These  sub- 
stations just  about  equal  in  number  today  the  36  or  38  that 
Edison  had  in  mind  for  "little  old  New  York"  as  he  knew  it 
forty  years  ago,  with  a  population  on  Manhattan  barely  one- 
half  of  what  it  is  today.  Possibly  some  relation  may  persist 
that  runs  through  the  requirements  as  the  system  and  the 
city,  or  its  population  and  area,  expand  together.  Looking  at 
the  details  of  the  sub-station  equipment,  it  is  seen  that  of 
storage  batteries  there  are  now,  after  thirty  years,  no  fewer 
than  50  with  a  reservoir,  stand-by  capacity  of  435,500  am- 
pere hours  at  a  i  hour  rate  of  discharge.  Of  rotary  convert- 
ers, 182  are  listed  with  a  capacity  of  362,200  kilowatts;  and 
there  are  397  static  transformers. 

A  mere  catalogue  of  machinery,  a  simple  table  of  appara- 
tus, cannot  reveal  the  rationale  of  even  a  minor  mechanical 
plant.  The  great  modern  central  stations,  like  the  ocean 
liners,  or  the  steel  mills,  are  organisms  of  a  high  complexity, 
whose  perfect  operation  can  be  traced  to  adequate  concep- 
tion of  the  problem  confronted  and  consummate  skill  in  devis- 
ing the  harmonious  whole,  adapted  ideally  to  the  conditions. 
In  a  few  paragraphs  have  been  presented  the  steps  in  the 
evolution  of  the  New  York  Edison  central  stations,  and  a 
summing  up  of.  the  data  with  regard  to  their  mere  physical 
equipment.  There  is  left  for  other  chapters  discussion  of 
various  engineering  features  to  include  which  here  would 
blur  and  confuse  the  main  lines  of  the  picture,  but  which 
considered  separately  will  strengthen  the  impression  that  now 
just  as  much  as  when  Edison  himself  forty  years  ago  applied 
his  intellectual  powers  to  the  lamp,  the  dynamo,  and  all  that 
went  to  make  old  Pearl  Street  a  magnificent  success,  talent 
of  corresponding  character  is  demanded  for  the  design  and 

93 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

•*. 

operation  of  the  plants  that  furnish  light,  heat  and  power 
in  1922. 

All  the  foregoing  treats  of  the  vital  interior  organism  of 
the  modern  central  station  as  illustrated  in  New  York  and 
elsewhere.  There  is,  however,  the  exterior  aspect  of  such 
buildings  now  as  typical  and  distinctive  as  that  of  a  cathe- 
dral; and  the  architectural  elements  in  the  long  series  of  New 
York  Edison  plants  will  also  be  taken  up  in  a  later  chapter. 


94 


CHAPTER  VIII 

Expansion  of  the  Edison  Network  and 
Details  of  the  Underground  System 

SEVEN  years  after  the  First  Edison  District  of  New  York 
went  into  operation  successfully,  entirely  with  under- 
ground circuits — the  first  example  of  the  kind  the  world  had 
ever  seen,  a  stormy  convention  of  electric  light  managers  was 
held  at  Niagara  Falls.  The  noise  of  it  literally  rivaled  that 
of  the  great  cataract.  The  hotel  lobbies  were  surging  masses 
of  excited  men. 

This  scene,  which  stands  out  vividly  in  memory  thirty- 
three  years  later,  was  provoked  by  the  proposition  that  the 
central  station  men  there  assembled  in  their  authoritative 
organization  ought  to  admit  that  Edison  had  proved  his 
case,  and  that  a  formal  resolution  should  be  adopted  in  favor 
of  placing  the  wires  underground.  The  subject,  like  the  wires, 
was  very  much  in  the  air  at  the  time;  a  Board  of  Electrical 
Control  had  just  been  appointed  by  Governor  Flower  solely 
to  take  down  the  wires  in  the  city  of  New  York;  and  it  was 
alleged  that  an  even  stronger  control  of  the  whole  electric 
light  industry  was  being  aimed  at  by  a  group  of  clever  ma- 
nipulators interested  in  creating  conduit  systems  into  which 
all  the  wires  would  have  to  go. 

Reference  to  this  little  episode  is  not  introduced  merely  be- 
cause it  was  so  picturesque  and  human,  but  because  it  illus- 
trates the  fact  that  in  winning  his  case  Edison  stopped  any 
material  extension  of  his  admirable  underground  system  as 
originally  designed.  When  it  was  agreed  that,  as  he  had 
insisted,  heavily  loaded  circuits  would  work  underground 
without  danger,  the  obvious  next  step  was  the  provision 
of  tubes  and  ducts  in  which  to  place  all  the  wires  and  cables 
for  every  electrical  utility.  Some  of  the  attributions  paid 

95 


40  R 

/    MLJu 


HEATING  NEW  YORK  BY  STEAM 

Drawn  by  W  P  Snyder.  Harper  s  Weekly,  1882 


NETWORK  AND  UNDERGROUND  SYSTEM 

in  this  volume  to  the  founder  of  the  New  York  Edison 
service  may  possibly  have  smacked  of  a  desire  to  lay  at  his 
feet  all  the  glory,  but  the  offence,  if  such  it  be,  must  now  be 
added  to  in  the  assertion  that  Edison  is  the  father  of  all  the 
underground  working  of  electrical  conductors  in  America. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Edison  underground  system,  as 
applied  in  several  of  the  largest  American  cities,  was  wholly 
adequate  to  its  purpose.  To  quote  Mr  John  W  Lieb,  who  more 
than  any  other  man  has  had  to  deal  with  both  the  older 
method  and  the  later  ones:  "The  Edison  tube  system,  aside 
from  its  remarkably  perfect  engineering  plans  of  feeders  and 
mains,  sectionalized  and  multiple-arced,  and  securing  a 
uniform  pressure  throughout  an  extensive  network  notwith- 
standing variations  in  density  of  territory  and  fluctuations 
in  load,  exhibited  a  number  of  wonderfully  well-thought  out 
details — simple,  intensely  practical,  and  thoroughly  effective 
in  operation."  Thus  crisply  stated  is  the  proof  of  Edison's 
ability  as  an  engineer,  just  as  the  dynamo  was  proof  of  his 
skill  as  a  designer,  and  the  lamp  a  supreme  proof  of  his  mas- 
tery as  an  inventor. 

Descending  to  detail  it  was  pointed  out  that  the  Edison 
tube  proper  had  many  good  features  to  commend  it,  and 
with  its  feeder,  junction,  tee,  coupling  and  service  boxes, 
straight  and  T-joints,  safety  catches  and  other  minor  parts, 
presented  a  truly  remarkable  aggregation  of  both  electrical 
and  mechanical  details.  The  service  and  house  wiring,  cut- 
outs, fuse  blocks  and  all  the  imaginable  combinations  of  main 
lines  and  branches,  the  safety  catch  plugs,  circuit  switches, 
key  sockets,  plain  sockets,  fixture  parts,  embodied  "an 
adaptation  of  means  to  the  end,  and  all  so  responsive  to 
every  requirement,  that  it  was  many  years  before  the  in- 
dustry could  show  any  other  devices  that  were  anywhere 
near  to  an  equivalent."  At  first,  as  the  historical  relics  col- 
lected for  the  memorial  exhibition  will  show,  there  was  some 
crude  rough-and-readiness  about  the  wooden  blocks  and 

97 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


* 

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UNDERGROUND  MAINS 

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THE  EDISON  UNDERGROUND  SYSTEM  IN  1883 

plugs,  with  their  original  conical  rim  and  barrel  screw  con- 
tacts— as  there  was  about  flexible  cords  and  fixtures  for  in- 
terior use — but  the  porcelain  and  glass  industries  got  to  work, 
and  soon  molded  and  pressed  form  were  available,  as  well  as 
shapes  in  a  variety  of  new  insulating  materials,  extending 
the  old  notions  of  what  fireproof  equipment  should  be.  Once 
again,  the  interaction  of  allied  arts  was  seen,  with  consequent 
higher  perfection  in  each. 

But  the  early  devices  met  the  situation,  they  accom- 
plished the  purpose,  filled  all  service  requirements,  and  their 
fame  will  never  be  lessened.  Their  fragrant  memory  will  re- 
main more  particularly  with  all  who  worked  in  the  making  or 
installing  of  the  fifteen  miles  of  Edison  tube  conductors 
needed  for  the  First  District.  The  tubes  were  manufactured 
by  the  Electric  Tube  Company,  at  65  Washington  Street, 
with  Mr  John  Kruesi  as  presiding  genius  over  the  kettles  of 


NETWORK  AND  UNDERGROUND  SYSTEM 

asphaltum  and  linseed  oil.  The  conductors  were  half-round 
copper  bars  held  in  place,  as  to  the  tube  itself  and  each 
other,  by  stout  cardboard  at  first,  and  later  by  a  twisted  rope 
and  cardboard  spacing.  The  pipes  were  twenty  foot  lengths 
into  which  the  conductors,  six  inches  longer,  were  inserted, 
with  the  odorous  "compound"  forced  in  for  insulation.  In 
one  of  the  operations,  the  lengths  of  tubing  had  to  be  stuck 
out  of  the  front  window  to  turn  them  around;  and  the  whole 
neighborhood  participated  in  the  spectacle  and  smell.  Up  to 
the  very  last  stages  of  their  use  Edison  delighted  in  the  proc- 
esses of  tube  manufacture,  for  the  problems  of  insulation  ap- 
pealed to  his  expert  familiarity  with  chemistry.  As  late  as 
1887  he  is  seen  discussing  with  Mr  Kruesi  the  inadequacy  of 
the  insulating  compound  under  1200  volts  pressure,  and  ex- 
patiating on  the  importance  of  eliminating  air  bubbles. 
"Until  I  get  at  the  proper  method  of  pouring  and  get  rid  of 
the  air  bubbles,  it  will  be  waste  of  time  to  experiment  with 
other  asphalts."  A  little  later,  inventing  off  hand,  in  a  letter 
to  Kruesi,  shrewd  schemes  for  getting  rid  of  those  bubbles 
and  holes,  he  remarked,  "Thus  you  have  three  coatings,  and 
it  is  impossible  an  air  hole  in  one  should  match  the  other." 

One  of  the  leading  engineers  of  the  last  generation  was  Dr 
Charles  E  Emery,  who,  just  about  the  time  that  Edison  was 
introducing  his  electric  light  into  New  York,  was  struggling 
under  many  difficulties  to  give  the  city  another  pioneer 
utility  of  somewhat  analogous  character — steam  heating 
from  a  central  heating  plant.  Emery  was  more  successful  than 
Mr  Theodore  N  Vail  was  in  trying  to  give  Boston  a  hot  water 
distributing  system.  Misery  loves  company,  it  is  said,  but  in 
the  case  of  Edison,  for  his  own  guidance  he  wanted  to  know 
how  the  other  fellow  was  getting  along.  The  following  amus- 
ing incident,  described  by  Edison  to  the  writer,  is  certainly 
fitting  part  of  these  annals  of  New  York:  "While  I  was  dig- 
ging the  trenches  and  putting  in  the  tubes  in  the  several 
miles  of  street  in  the  First  District,  the  New  York  Steam 

99 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

••K 

Heating  Company  was  also  digging  trenches  and  putting  in 
steam  heating  pipes.  Mr  C  E  Emery,  then  the  chief  en- 
gineer, and  I  would  meet  quite  frequently  at  all  hours  of  the 
night,  I  looking  after  my  tubes  and  he  after  his  pipes.  At  the 
same  time  that  Emery  was  putting  down  his  pipes,  another 
concern  started  in  opposition  to  the  New  York  Steam  Heat- 
ing Company  and  was  also  working  nights  putting  down  its 
pipes  in  Maiden  Lane.  I  used  to  talk  to  Emery  about  the  suc- 
cess of  his  scheme.  I  thought  he  had  a  harder  proposition 
than  I  had  and  he  thought  that  mine  was  harder  than  his. 
But  one  thing  we  both  agreed  on,  and  that  was  that  the  other 
steam  heating  engineer  hadn't  any  chance  at  all,  and  that 
his  company  would  surely  fail.  If  he,  Emery,  was  right  the 
other  fellow  was  wrong.  Emery  used  mineral  wool  to  sur- 
round his  pipes,  which  was  of  a  fibrous  nature  and  was 
stuffed  in  boxes  to  prevent  the  loss  of  heat  and  pressure; 
whereas  his  competitor  was  laying  his  pipes  in  square  boxes 
filled  with  lampblack.  Before  Emery  had  finished  all  his 
pipes  and  was  working  in  the  street  one  night,  he  heard  a 
terrible  rush  of  steam.  It  seems  that  his  competitor  had  put 
on  steam  pressure  to  test  out  his  pipes.  There  was  a  leak  in 
the  pipe;  the  steam  got  into  the  lampblack,  and  blew'up, 
throwing  about  three  tons  of  lampblack  all  over  the  place, 
and  covering  the  fronts  of  several  stores  in  Maiden  Lane. 
When  the  people  came  down  next  morning  everything  was 
covered  with  lampblack — and  the  company  busted!" 

The  cynical  comment  made  at  this  very  time  that  "some 
of  the  electrical  companies  wanted  all  the  air,  others  ap- 
parently had  use  for  all  the  water,  Edison  asked  only  for  the 
earth,"  lost  some  of  its  sting  when  all  the  operating  com- 
panies had  to  go  underground  in  imitation  of  him.  A  famous 
and  delightful  New  York  Republican  politician  of  the  time, 
Mr  Jacob  Hess,  was  an  active  member  of  the  new  commis- 
sion formed,  as  already  noted,  and  he  once  described  the 
avalanche  of  plans  and  projects  that  overwhelmed  the  body, 

TOO 


NETWORK  AND  UNDERGROUND  SYSTEM 

especially  by  those  who  had  patents  for  sale  or  wanted  to  dig 
"pay  dirt"  out  of  the  "hole  in  the  ground."  The  Commission 
very  naturally  turned  to  Edison  for  his  advice.  It  was  terse, 
simple,  and  characteristic,  to  quote  Hess:  "All  you  have  to 
do,  gentlemen,  is  to  insulate  your  wires,  draw  them  through 
the  cheapest  thing  on  earth — iron  pipe — run  your  pipes 
through  channels  or  galleries  under  the  street,  and  youVe 
got  the  whole  thing  done."  All  will  agree  that  such  is  virtually 
the  system  of  the  whole  city  today  as  it  is  of  many  others— 
with  variants  in  perforated  cement  blocks  instead  of  the  plain 
iron  pipes  or  terra  cotta  ducts  that  can  be  built  up  into  any 
required  multiple  combination  to  suit  service  exigencies.  A 
further  reference  is  made  later  to  the  New  York  high  tension 
underground  subway  system  created  along  these  lines. 

At  any  rate,  thanks  to  Edison's  prescience,  The  New  York 
Edison  Company  faced  the  new  conditions,  serenely,  safe 
beyond  public  criticism.  His  original  plan  was  to  lay  the 
mains  in  front  of  the  buildings  on  each  block,  joined  at  the 
street  corners  into  a  crib  or  network;  and  to  supply  current 
to  the  system  of  "mains"  by  "feeders"  running  from  the 
central  station  to  various  strategic  points  on  the  network,  in 
order  to  maintain  an  even  pressure  of  supply.  Of  his  original 
"two-wire"  system,  4><  miles  of  feeders  and  io>^  miles  of 
mains  were  laid  downtown.  After  the  two-wire  period,  came, 
as  already  described,  the  famous  universal  "three-wire"  sys- 
tem, in  which,  by  introducing  a  third  wire  from  the  dynamo, 
it  was  possible  by  doubling  the  working  voltage,  maintaining 
however  the  lamp  voltage,  to  greatly  decrease  the  copper 
necessary  to  carry  the  current;  and  by  lessening  the  "drop" 
or  energy  losses,  to  extend  greatly  the  area  of  service.  All 
the  new  uptown  district  was  installed,  as  it  developed,  on 
the  three-wire  method,  not  only  in  the  streets,  but  throughout 
the  interior  installations,  the  lamps  being  evenly  "balanced" 
on  the  positive  and  negative  sides  with  120  volts  on  either 
side  of  the  system,  or  240  volts  between  the  "outside"  con- 

101 


NETWORK  AND  UNDERGROUND  SYSTEM 

ductors.  The  annals  of  the  Company  show  that  the  old  two- 
wire  system  disappeared  from  the  roster  in  1902.  A  state- 
ment,, published  by  the  author,  in  1896,  says  that  there  were 
then  203  miles  of  duct  containing  608  miles  of  New  York 
Edison  copper  conductor  under  the  streets.The  standard  sizes 
employed  for  mains  were  150,000  circular  mils,  200,000  c  M 
and  350,000  c  M  in  area.  In  the  mains,  the  neutral  or  third 
wire  was  the  same  in  cross  section  as  the  outside  wires;  while 
in  the  feeders,  running  from  400,000  to  1,000,000  c  M,  the 
neutral  wire  was  one-third  the  area  of  the  other  two.  It  was 
all  Edison  tube  as  standard,  at  the  time,  except  some  iron- 
armored  Siemens  cable  tried  for  feeders  radiating  from  Fifty- 
third  Street,  then  the  Company's  furthest  north  station. 

A  couple  of  years  later,  in  1898,  the  Company  launched 
out  on  its  high-tension  alternating  current  transmission,  with 
an  entirely  new  set  of  conditions,  and  then  came  the  splendid 
Waterside  Station,  the  first  visible  exponent  to  the  public  of 
all  the  sweeping,  evolutional  changes  summed  up  within  its 
stately  halls,  crowded  with  pulsating  machinery.  The  under- 
ground system  connected  with  Waterside,  in  1902,  is  typical 
of  all  that  has  been  done  later,  except  that  the  resort  to  higher 
and  higher  transmission  voltages  has  led  to  the  adoption  of 
insulation  methods  for  the  cables  that  involve  a  degree  of 
refinement  and  perfection  utterly  undreamed  of  even  twenty 
years  ago. 

The  three-phase,  25-cycle  alternating  current  at  6600 
volts — now  being  raised  to  1 1,000  volts — generated  at  Water- 
side, was  then,  as  now,  distributed  to  the  various  rotary  con- 
verter sub-stations  by  the  underground  cables,  carried  in 
trunk  line  ducts.  These  main  trunk  lines,  as  well  as  any  later 
additions,  form  part  of  the  general  subway  system  of  the 
Consolidated  Telegraph  &  Electrical  Subway  Company — the 
official  city  subway  system  for  high  tension  cables.  The  same 
general  method  and  description  applies  to  the  connections  of 
the  plants  at  the  northern  edge  and  tip  of  Manhattan  Island. 

103 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

The  ducts  of  the  Subway  Company,  residuary  legatee  of 
the  underground  functions  of  the  first  Subway  Commission 
of  1888,  and  its  successor  The  Board  of  Electrical  Control, 
cover  practically  all  of  the  main  avenues  of  the  city  and  nearly 
all  of  the  cross  streets  on  both  sides.  The  ducts,  into  which 
the  New  York  Edison  cables  are  drawn,  are  generally  glazed 
tile  laid  in  concrete.  Manholes  are  provided  at  street  inter- 
sections and  at  other  convenient  points  to  permit  the  drawing 
in  and  splicing  of  cables;  with  intermediate  handholes  in  the 
distributing  ducts  for  connections  to  the  individual  custom- 
ers. The  earlier  method  adopted  to  protect  the  high-tension 
three-phase  cables  at  the  manholes  was  a  wrapping  of  asbes- 
tos and  steel  tape  and  later  a  cement  covering  over  lattice 
wrapping. 

The  first  three-phase  cables  were  rubber  insulated  in  the 
6600  volt  work  of  the  Company  of  1898,  followed  very  shortly 
by  the  paper  insulated,  lead  sheathed  type.  These  cables  are 
of  37  strands  of  copper  wire,  carrying  paper  insulation  of 
5-32  inch  around  each  conductor  and  an  outside  insulating 
jacket  for  the  group  of  three  of  the  same  thickness.  The 
leaden  sheath  is  4-32  inch  in  thickness.  These  cables  had 
sufficient  capacity  to  carry  a  2500  kilowatt  rotary  converter, 
the  feeder  and  converter  being  operated  as  a  unit.  In  1911 
came  the  development  of  the  3500  kilowatt  converter  and 
fortunately  at  the  same  time  the  sector  type  of  cable.  This 
type  of  cable  contained  40  per  cent  more  copper  than  the 
round  type,  but  was  of  the  same  outside  diameter  permitting 
the  operation  of  the  new  3500  kilowatt  converters  as  a  unit 
with  a  sector  type  350,000  c  M  feeder. 

In  1921  The  New  York  Edison  Company  started  to  change 
its  transmission  system  from  6600  to  11,000  volts  and  it  is 
interesting  to  note  that  the  old  250,000  c  M  feeder  had  been 
designed  with  such  a  margin  of  safety  that  it  was  possible  to 
make  this  change  in  voltage  without  making  any  changes  in 
the  high  tension  feeders. 

104 


CHAPTER  IX 

Some  Chief  Engineering  Features  of  the 
New  York  Edison  System  and  Service 

THE  power  to  visualize  the  future  no  less  than  the  ability 
to  cope  with  the  present  is  demanded  of  the  engineer 
when  he  comes  to  deal  with  the  supply  of  electric  light  and 
power  to  several  million  people  today,  whose  number  may 
well  be  twice  as  great  when  The  New  York  Edison  Company 
marching  on,  celebrates  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  its  hum- 
ble beginning  in  a  little,  narrow,  crooked  street  "downtown." 
All  of  which  may  broadly  be  true  in  other  fields  of  endeavor, 
but  it  is  certainly  pertinent  and  justified  here  as  one  reads 
the  remark  of  Mr  T  E  Murray,  vice-president,  in  1910,  about 
the  twin  Waterside  stations,  "Waterside  No  i  station  was 
designed  to  satisfy  the  steadily  increasing  load  on  the  New 
York  Edison  system  at  the  rate  then  obtaining  until  1910,  but, 
as  the  construction  proceeded  it  was  seen  that  even  with  the 
increased  capacity  which  was  obtained  from  the  generating 
units  the  station  would  be  at  its  limit  after  the  year  1905." 
He  then  tells  how  it  was  decided  to  construct  a  second  station 
at  the  same  center,  a  location  that  met  the  exigencies  better 
than  any  other  spot  on  either  shore  of  Manhattan  Island. 
This  station  was  therefore  planned  also  to  be  connected  both 
electrically  and  mechanically  with  No  i,  since  all  the  prob- 
lems of  safety,  continuity  of  service  and  flexibility,  could  be 
better  solved  by  the  close  proximity  of  the  stations  than  in 
any  other  way.  Thus  it  came  about  that  Waterside  No  i, 
completed  in  October,  1901,  soon  had  placed  alongside  it  the 
noble  "twin"  Waterside  No  2,  which  was  put  into  regular 
service  in  1906.  Even  while  all  this  development  was  going 
on,  internal  organic  changes  were  taking  place,  for  in  1912, 
for  example,  four  of  the  original  3500  kilowatt  generators  in 

105 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

No  i  were  replaced  by  three  20,000  kilowatt  turbines,  taking 
up  hardly  any  more  space  than  their  predecessors,  although 
at  once  jumping  the  total  capacity  from  14,000  kilowatts,  in 
the  old  group,  to  over  four  times  as  much — 60,000  kilowatts 
in  the  new.  Later,  the  remaining  engines  were  replaced  by 
two  35,000  kilowatt  turbines,  still  further  increasing  the  ratio 
of  generating  replacement  to  the  original  equipment. 

Having  thus  presented  briefly  in  this  and  other  chapters 
the  engineering  theory  and  philosophy  of  current  generation 
and  distribution  by  the  New  York  Edison  system,  the  temp- 
tation is  to  touch  upon  a  number  of  important  engineering 
"high  spots,"  but  one  is  led  immediately  into  a  mass  of 
technical  detail,  which  the  reader  would  doubtless  not  revel 
in  as  much  as  does  the  expert,  already  fairly  familiar  with  it. 
Were  such  details  here  and  now  described  in  all  their  ramifi- 
cations, it  would  be  impossible  to  stress  too  greatly  the 
thought,  ingenuity  and  skill  displayed  in  the  work,  over  all 
of  which  as  when  forty  years  ago  Edison  wanted  as  big 
margins  of  it  as  he  could  then  secure,  is  written  the  slogan 
"Service  First." 

Before  there  can  be  any  coal  handling  there  must  be  a 
coal  supply,  which  in  itself  is  quite  as  much  an  engineering 
question  as  a  mechanical  one.  A  nation  that  ever  since  1917 
has  been  on  the  brink  of  fuel  shortage  needs  no  reminder  of 
the  vital  importance  of  coal.  In  the  central  station  industry, 
whose  output  was  nearly  forty-four  billion  kilowatt  hours  in 
1921,  of  which  probably  two-thirds  was  produced  by  steam, 
the  highest  economy  of  coal  and  steam  utilization  is  insisted 
upon. 

Many  are  the  vicissitudes  to  which  the  central  station 
industry  in  its  amazing  growth  has  been  subjected,  chiefly 
because  it  has  persistently  doubled  itself  every  five  years 
since  Edison  began  four  decades  ago.  The  coal  and  ash  heaps 
have  shared  the  general  tumult,  as  they  left  behind  the  little 
barrels  that  cluttered  up  the  area  way  of  Pearl  Street.  For 

1 06 


CHIEF  ENGINEERING  FEATURES 

instance,  the  bunkers  at  the  top  of  Waterside  No  2  hold 
about  1800  tons  of  coal,  or  nearly  two  week's  supply;  and 
the  tower  buckets  and  elevating  machinery  to  hoist  that  coal 
run  easily  at  a  rate  of  over  150  tons  an  hour.  Of  similar 
organization,  there  are  at  Hell  Gate  to  handle  the  enormous 
tonnage  of  coal  required  two  coal  towers  on  the  wharf, 
electrically  operated  to  hoist  250  tons  per  hour,  two  skip 
hoists  of  200  tons  an  hour,  and  automatic  cable  roads  winding 
around  the  roof  story,  of  corresponding  capacity.  Across  the 
Hudson  at  Shadyside,  opposite  the  Grant  Tomb,  is  a  big 
tract  of  land  bought  by  The  New  York  Edison  Company  in 
1903,  where  a  huge  supply  of  coal  is  kept  on  hand,  the  yards 
there  having  a  capacity  of  over  200,000  tons  fed  in  from  the 
coal  hinterland;  also  there  is  a  coal  storage  capacity  at  the 
Hell  Gate  station  of  100,000  tons.  The  generating  stations 
consume  roughly  from  3000  to  4000  tons  of  coal  per  day, 
brought  in  by  barges  from  the  tide  water  terminals  or  from 
Shadyside.  At  the  Watersides,  the  ashes  are  handled  by  an 
ingenious  duplicate  conveying  system  into  a  pocket  and  then 
to  scows;  but  at  Hell  Gate,  by  a  more  recent  method,  the 
ashes  are  flushed  by  condensing  water  to  a  settling  tank  on 
the  dock,  and  a  crane  then  delivers  them  either  to  auto 
trucks  or  to  the  scows.  Waterside  No  2  has  no  fewer  than  92 
boilers  of  650  horsepower  each,  arranged  on  two  floors,  one 
with  48  and  the  other  with  42.  Each  of  the  four  lofty  stacks, 
located  midway  of  a  boiler  row,  serves  a  quarter  of  the  boilers 
on  each  floor;  whereas  the  Hell  Gate  station,  for  its  present 
installation  of  half  its  ultimate  capacity,  has  12  boilers  of 
1980  horsepower  each,  all  on  a  single  floor,  served  by  two 
huge  stacks.  But  only  by  visiting  these  stations  can  any  true 
appreciation  of  them  be  obtained. 

Turning  to  the  current  handling  apparatus:  conditions 
and  methods  as  complex  as  those  of  dealing  with  mil- 
lions of  tons  of  coal  are  encountered.  One  of  the  extraordinary 
aspects  of  modern  warfare  is  that  a  battle  firing  line  may 

107 


THE  STACKS  OF  THE  WATERSIDE  STATIONS,  THIRTY-EIGHTH 
FORTIETH  STREETS,  ON  THE  EAST  RIVER 

Etching  by  E  Horter 


TO 


CHIEF  ENGINEERING  FEATURES 

often  be  a  hundred  miles  long,  while  the  operative  strategic 
control  is  many  miles  back  of  the  front  where  the  struggle 
cannot  possibly  be  seen.  In  like  manner,  the  little  one-piece 
wooden  or  slate  switchboard  of  the  early  stations  has  grown 
into  literally  a  full-sized  apartment  house,  whose  tenants 
are  switches  and  switchboards.  At  Waterside  the  elec- 
trical galleries  mount  through  seven  floors,  but  they  are  all 
within  the  main  power  house  structure.  There  is  plenty  of 
room  for  them,  for  Waterside  No  2  has  the  noble  dimensions 
of  about  350  feet  by  200,  and  an  area  of  67,478  square  feet, 
far  in  excess  of  many  a  famous  cathedral  or  operahouse.  But 
at  Hell  Gate  the  development  has  gone  even  further,  for  its 
electrical  control  galleries  are  in  a  separate  seven-story  steel 
frame  reinforced  concrete  building  212  feet  by  105.  To  pre- 
vent or  frustrate  any  induced  electrical  current,  the  building 
is  so  constructed  that  no  two  reinforcing  bars  are  in  contact, 
a  refinement  quite  unknown  to  other  architecture.  In  all 
these  big  modern  central  stations  there  are,  moreover,  con- 
crete or  brick  switching  compartments,  wherein  each  switch 
works  in  strict  solitary  confinement.  Hell  Gate  has  1452  such 
cells.  For  the  cables  running  in  the  walls  and  floors  of  its 
switching  galleries,  there  are  about  30  miles  of  concrete  duct. 

And  finally  the  outputs  of  all  of  the  mammoth  producers 
of  electrical  power,  the  two  Watersides,  Sherman  Creek  and 
Hell  Gate  with  a  half  dozen  of  smaller  magnitude,  are  corre- 
lated under  the  direct  control  of  a  central  head,  which  brings 
them  into  one  single  great  operating  system. 

To  secure  the  unfailing  perfection  of  service  provided 
means  that  no  detail  of  equipment,  organization  or  operation 
can  ever  be  overlooked,  from  the  coal  pile,  and  even  the  cars 
of  coal  at  the  mines,  to  the  final  delivery  of  the  finished  prod- 
uct to  the  proper  channels  of  distribution. 

A  few  pages  back,  the  problems  of  metering  were  referred 
to  as  a  very  important  part  of  handling  the  current  gener- 
ated and  distributed  by  a  central  station.  What  is  more  par- 

109 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

^ 

ticularly  in  mind  is  the  measurement  of  the  electrical  energy 
delivered  to  the  consumer.  Obviously,  a  competent  manage- 
ment will  check  up  very  closely  the  number  of  units  it  pro- 
duces, uses  for  itself,  supplies  to  its  patrons,  or  is  unaccounted 
for.  That  is  a  function  of  internal  economy.  The  larger  and 
more  vital  aspect  of  metering  is  found  in  the  relations  with 
the  public,  exterior  to  the  plant.  In  an  article  published  some 
eight  years  ago,  entitled,  "Commercial  Metering  of  Elec- 
trical Energy";  the  Company's  metering  methods  are  set 
forth  in  detail.  Some  of  the  more  important  elements  to  be 
considered  in  the  operation  of  a  meter  department  are  noted, 
viz,  the  selection  of  the  proper  types  of  meters  and  their  ap- 
proval by  the  regulating  authority;  assignment  of  the  proper 
type  and  capacity  of  meter  to  the  individual  installation;  a 
proper  system  of  tests  and  inspections;  inspection  on  in- 
stallation; periodic  tests;  inspection  to  detect  tampering; 
office  test;  consumers'  complaint  test;  Public  Service  Com- 
mission tests;  method  of  settlement  of  complaints;  standard 
organization  of  meter  department;  records  and  statistics. 
One  or  two  of  these  divisions  fall  more  directly  within  the 
scope  of  the  chapters  on  rates  and  public  relations,  in  the 
present  book.  But  they  are  all  essential  features  of  this"  gen- 
eral survey  which,  in  itself,  gives  a  brief,  swift  glance  at  the 
outstanding  features  in  modern  meter  testing  and  inspection 
as  carried  on  up  to  the  present  moment.  Of  the  meters  them- 
selves little  need  be  said  here.  There  are  no  instruments 
superior  for  the  measurement  of  any  commodity  in  large 
daily  consumption,  to  those  employed  in  the  electrical  field; 
nor  are  there  any  better  methods  of  maintaining  accuracy 
than  are  applied  to  the  calibration  of  such  instruments.  The 
public  has  long  since  learned  as  to  electricity  meters  that,  as 
Paul  Bourget  has  said  somewhere,  there  is  "no  mystery, 
only  ignorance";  and  that  the  principles  worked  upon  are 
within  high  school  comprehension.  Moreover,  the  accept- 
ability of  any  meter  was  long  since  simplified,  by  the  estab- 


1 10 


CHIEF  ENGINEERING  FEATURES 

lishment  of  the  Code  of  Electricity  Meters  developed  by  the 
National  Electric  Light  Association  and  the  Association  of 
Edison  Illuminating  Companies,  back  of  which  lies  the  ad- 
mirable work  of  the  numerous  Public  Service  Commissions 
of  the  country  and  the  splendid  organization  for  any  final 
review  and  test  of  the  LJ  S  Bureau  of  Standards  at  Washing- 
ton. The  rules  and  regulations  for  the  meters  in  New  York 
City  provide  for  the  testing  of  all  and  every  meter  periodic- 
ally at  intervals  ranging  from  six  to  forty-two  months,  de- 
pending on  nature  and  function,  "Supplementing  a  routine 
testing  schedule  such  as  the  above,  there  may  be  special 
groups  of  meters  tested  at  shorter  intervals  because  an  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  local  conditions  makes  more  frequent 
tests  advisable,  such,  for  instance,  as  meters  set  for  emer- 
gency, temporary  or  construction  work.  *  *  *  Another  group 
of  meters  which  it  is  advisable  to  test  at  intervals  shorter 
than  those  prescribed  by  the  routine  schedule  of  tests,  con- 
sists of  meters  whose  monthly  registration  would  raise  a 
suspicion  of  tampering  on  the  part  of  the  consumer." 

The  general  policy  of  utmost  care  and  vigilance,  empha- 
sizing the  fact  that  every  electrical  engineer  has  drilled  into 
him  the  necessity  for  exactitude,  is  summed  up  in  the  re- 
mark of  one  of  the  leading  educational  authorities  in  Amer- 
ica, that:  "Experience  in  careful  measurement  gradually 
teaches  us  to  regard  any  graduated  instrument  with  sus- 
picion; and  so  it  becomes  necessary  from  time  to  time  to  test 
the  accuracy  of  electric  instruments."  It  is  a  matter  of  com- 
mon knowledge  that  the  resort  to  the  Public  Service  Com- 
missions by  various  complainants  for  supposed  inaccuracy 
has  very  steadily  declined  throughout  the  country,  and  has 
been  succeeded  by  a  growing  appreciation  on  the  part  of  the 
public  of  the  high  plane  upon  which  the  lighting  companies 
have  developed  the  metering  of  their  product,  endeavoring 
to  avoid  overcharge,  inaccuracy  and  justifiable  ground  of 
complaint.  In  that  article  cited  tables  and  curves  given 

in 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

show  that  from  1909  to  1913  the  ratio  of  New  York  com- 
plaints to  the  Public  Service  Commission  to  the  total  num- 
ber of  meters  in  use  fell  from  0.75  per  cent  on  95,000  meters  to 
o.i  8  per  cent  on  just  twice  the  number;  and  that  curve  has 
steadily  continued  to  drop  ever  since. 

Just  what  all  this  requires  may  be  gathered  from  one  sen- 
tence in  the  article:  "The  work  involved  in  conducting  as  in 
one  case  we  have  in  mind,  300,000  meter  tests  and  inspec- 
tions annually,  involves  not  only  the  work  of  the  meter  in- 
dexer  and  installation  workmen,  but  the  gathering,  training, 
maintaining  and  directing  of  a  complete  and  efficient  or- 
ganization." Such  men  are  not  readily  found  nor  easily 
trained;  in  fact,  they  have  usually  natural  aptitude  and  en- 
thusiasm. When  the  late  Stephen  D  Field  was  in  Geneva 
with  the  writer  he  had  bought  no  fewer  than  fifteen  of  the 
beautiful  Swiss  watches  there  made.  Each  had  some  special 
feature  of  skill,  finish  and  fineness;  and  the  worthy  nephew 
of  Cyrus  simply  could  not  resist  the  appeal  to  his  Yankee  love 
of  exquisite  mechanical  workmanship,  although  it  kept  him 
hovering  on  the  border  of  being  "stonebroke."  He  was,  in 
this  sense,  a  typical  "meterman,"  as  developed  in  the  meter 
department  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company,  with'con- 
science  and  conscientiousness  equal  to  that  of  the  meters. 


112 


CHAPTER  X 

Financial  Aspects  of  New  York  Edison 
Growth— Real  Estate— Insurance 

ONE  million  dollars  was  a  good  deal  of  money  in  1882. 
So  it  is  now,  forty  years  later,  after  a  period  of  financial, 
industrial,  and  economic  expansion  that  carries  with  it 
totals  and  quantities  to  be  expressed  in  billions.  The  sum 
named  was  the  capital  of  The  Edison  Electric  Illuminat- 
ing Company  of  New  York,  to  which  The  New  York  Edison 
Company  is  the  lineal  successor.  At  the  time  of  the  incorpora- 
tion, under  circumstances  noted  in  a  previous  chapter,  the 
young  electric  lighting  industry  of  the  country  was  so  small 
it  was  not  made  a  subject  to  be  included  in  the  U  S  census; 
and  as  late  as  1890,  New  York  State  was  the  one  common- 
wealth for  which  even  a  partial  canvass  had  been  made. 
In  that  year,  the  total  cost  of  construction  and  equipment  in 
the  State  was  $31,183,618.  The  last  bond  issue  of  The  New 
York  Edison  Company,  in  1922,  to  cover  necessary  new  con- 
struction was  $30,000,000,  instantly  taken  up  by  the  New 
York  public.  In  1902,  the  electric  lighting  plants  of  the  whole 
state  of  New  York  stood  for  $  1 1 2,998,778  in  cost  of  construc- 
tion and  equipment.  The  balance  sheet  of  the  Company  as 
of  November,  1921,  showed  fixed  capital  assets,  including 
land,  or  half  as  much  again  as  that,  namely,  $159,855,435. 
This  compares  again  in  a  very  striking  way  with  the  cost  of 
all  the  central  stations  in  the  United  States,  in  1902,  a  sum 
just  slightly  in  excess  of  $500,000,000;  so  that  in  "little  old 
New  York,"  The  New  York  Edison  Company  by  itself  now 
stands  for  one-third  of  the  total  central  station  investment 
of  the  whole  United  States  only  two  decades  ago. 

Such  figures  are  impressive  in  themselves,  but  their  im- 
portance  grows    as   one   studies    the   various   implications. 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

The  financial  ones  were  admirably  brought  up  a  month  or 
two  ago  by  U  S  Attorney  General  Daugherty,  in  some 
remarks  which  embodied  the  hope  that  the  old  days,  when 
public  utilities  were  subjected  to  partisan  political  agita- 
tion, had  passed,  as  well  as  any  unjust  expectations  and  de- 
mands either  by  the  public  or  the  utilities.  He  expressed  the 
general  amazement  that  so  much  should  now  be  at  stake. 
The  investment  of  the  light  and  power  companies  is  already, 
he  said,  five  billions  of  dollars — ten  times  as  much  as  twenty 
years  ago.  The  gross  annual  income  is  $950,000,000.  There 
are  about  1,600,000  holders  of  the  securities  of  some  5000 
companies.  The  banks  of  the  country  have  invested  in  such 
securities  to  the  extent  of  $  i  ,700,000,000.  As  there  are  29,000 
banks  with  27,000,000  depositors,  an  average  per  capita 
investment  is  seen  of  about  $63,  for  about  half  the  adult 
population  of  the  United  States.  Moreover,  to  quote  Mr 
Daugherty:  "The  life  insurance  companies  of  the  country, 
which  invest  the  savings  and  care  for  the  aged,  as  well  as 
for  those  who  have  a  claim  upon  our  bounty,  have  also  in- 
vested, I  find,  $300,000,000  of  their  funds  in  such  securities." 
To  all  of  which  it  may  be  added  that  figures  compiled  by  the 
Electrical  World,,  in  1920,  showed  in  that  year  no  fewer  than 
8,520,400  central  station  customers,  a  number  which  in 
round  figures,  but  quite  accurately,  may  now  be  placed  at 
10,000,000.  Tennyson  had  a  fine  passage  about  the  throne 
of  England  being  "broad  based  upon  the  people's  will." 
A  poet  might  well  be  moved  to  verse  in  contemplating  an 
agency  for  public  service  which  barely  existed  before  old 
Pearl  Street  forty  years  ago,  but  is  now  broad  based  upon 
the  people's  consumption  of  electricity.  A  banker  may  well 
see  security  in  an  investment  that,  established  barely  four 
decades  ago,  now  has  as  customers  much  more  than  half  the 
families  in  the  towns  and  cities  of  America;  with  every  pros- 
pect of  adding  pretty  well  all  the  others  by  1925. 

Now  the  very  interesting  fact  about  all  this  is  that  these 

114 


FINANCIAL  ASPECTS 

results  have  been  so  largely  achieved  in  Edison's  way;  and 
that  the  great  protagonist  and  exemplar  of  that  way  has 
been  The  New  York  Edison  Company.  A  few  statistics  are 
now  presented  with  regard  to  the  finances,  real  estate  and 
other  elements  of  its  make-up,  as  distinct  from  the  physical 
plant  and  equipment.  The  figures  in  the  balance  sheet  sub- 
mitted to  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange  at  the  end  of  1921 
for  the  listing  of  the  $30,000,000  first  lien  and  refunding 
mortgage  bonds,  showed  debt  liabilities  of  $51,087,965  of 
which  $38,080,109  was  funded  debt.  There  was  also  an 
authorized  issue  of  stock  of  $87,145,300  all  held  by  the  Con- 
solidated Gas  Company  of  New  York.  The  total  under  the 
head  of  liabilities  was  $205,953,847.  The  asset  side  of  the 
balance  sheet  showed  in  fixed  capital  assets,  land,  plant,  etc,  a 
total  of  $159,855,435;  bonds  and  stocks  of  affiliated  compa- 
nies, of  $26,829,270;  in  accounts  receivable,  $9,171,802;  ma- 
terial and  supplies  at  cost,  $4,593,364;  Government  bonds, 
$4,343,200;  cash  and  some  miscellaneous  items  of  $1,160,768. 
The  rate  of  7  per  cent  dividend  has  been  maintained  since 
1915,  and  the  record  of  dividend  payments  goes  back  to  that 
first  $i  in  1885  out  of  the  earnings  of  Old  Pearl  Street.  Refer- 
ence may  be  fitly  made  here  to  the  balance  sheet  of  the  Allied 
United  Electric  Light  &  Power  Company  as  the  two  com- 
panies must  be  considered  together  as  a  unit  in  connection 
with  their  service  to  the  New  York  public. 

The  United  Company  alone  shows  total  assets  of  $48,486,- 
702  and  a  gross  earnings  for  the  year  of  $8,194,428.  Some  idea 
of  the  United  properties  may  be  formed  from  the  fact  that 
into  its  splendid  Hell  Gate  plant,  the  finest  in  the  world,  the 
very  latest  expression  of  the  central  station  art,  the  sum  of 
$20,000,000  has  been  put  with  half  of  its  proposed  ultimate 
capacity. 

The  question  of  financial  and  physical  maintenance  of  a 
public  utility  property  is  always  of  interest,  and,  as  is  well 
known,  quite  often  constitutes  a  problem  for  the  various 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

regulatory  bodies  as  well  as  the  companies,  which  long  since 
emerged  from  a  regime  when  the  provisions  necessary  for 
reserves,  retirements  and  upkeep  as  a  financial  organism 
were  far  less  well  recognized  and  enforced  than  today.  In 
this  connection,  therefore,  as  well  as  for  its  own  significance 
as  an  operating  item  of  fact,  it  is  interesting  to  record  that 
from  1916  when  the  kilowatt  hour  output  was  just  about 
856,000,000  units  it  ran  up  to  1,278,000,000  in  1920,  and  it 
reached  in  1921  a  grand  total  of  1,474,000,000.  It  is  obvious 
from  some  of  the  figures  given  above,  that  the  Company 
earned  in  1920  the  modest  average  sum  of  less  than  5  cents 
per  unit  sold  and  derived  the  even  more  modest  net  income 
from  that  of  about  i  cent.  Ten  years  ago,  the  rate  had  been 
worked  down  by  steadily  increasing  efficiencies  to  an  average 
of  somewhat  over  6  cents  per  unit;  but,  in  1882,  when  the 
public  rallied  gladly  to  Edison's  new  standard  of  illumination, 
it  had  paid  with  alacrity  several  times  the  above  amounts 
per  kilowatt  hour,  which  was  then  made  as  a  charge  of  1.2 
cents  per  16  candle  power  lamp  per  hour.  The  kilowatt  unit 
is  used  advisedly  in  such  comparisons,  as  it  was  not  until 
1890,  just  when  the  scientific  world  adopted  it  as  a  new  unit 
of  energy  more  universal  now  than  the  horsepower,  that  the 
New  York  Edison  system,  ever  swift  to  line  up  with  and  lead 
new  practice,  put  the  kilowatt  hour  as  the  future  basis  of 
all  its  economics.  Of  that  a  little  more  hereafter  in  dealing 
with  the  topics  of  rates. 

It  is  incidentally  mentioned,  in  the  official  documents  to 
the  Stock  Exchange,  at  the  beginning  of  this  year,  that  the 
Company's  property  under  the  mortgage  consisted  of  no 
fewer  than  89  ''parcels."  There  lies  before  the  writer  a  list 
of  48  parcels  acquired  since  January,  1903;  and  when  merely 
one  of  these  is  tersely  noted  as  "block,  Thirty-ninth  to 
Fortieth  Streets,"  it  is  realized  that  in  many  instances  one  is 
dealing  with  transactions  of  tremendous  magnitude,  and 
with  operations  that  must  be  carried  out  with  as  infinite 

116 


FINANCIAL  ASPECTS 

care  and  good  judgment  as  are  the  decisions  affecting  the 
engineering  features  and  mechanical  details.  It  stands  to 
reason  that  by  virtue  of  its  real  estate  footing  in  New  York 
City, the  Company  has  a  very  large  stake  in  good  city  govern- 
ment and  management.  It  could  not,  indeed,  be  otherwise. 
The  reflection  is  by  no  means  new  here  that  a  central  station 
public  utility  is  in  a  most  extraordinary  manner  knit  into 
the  inmost  framework  and  structure  of  a  great  city,  as 
solemnly  pledged  to  be  part  of  it  as  the  very  rocks  and  soil. 
Manufacture  shifts  its  local  habitation  ruthlessly  over  night. 
The  dweller  in  a  Manhattan  flat  today  pays  taxes  next  year 
in  Westchester.  Even  a  harrassed  trolley  line  can  take  up 
its  road  bed  and  walk  away.  That  the  personal  element  en- 
ters sometimes  in  a  way  little  suspected  is  best  illustrated  in  a 
very  funny  story  once  told  the  writer  by  Edison.  The  young 
inventor  was  beginning  his  wonderful  career  of  invention  in 
New  York,  but  found  like  other  manufacturers  that  there 
were  advantages  sometimes  over  in  New  Jersey,  so  he  had  a 
shop  in  Newark.  "When  I  moved  to  Menlo  Park,  I  took  out 
only  the  machinery  that  would  be  necessary  for  experimental 
purposes,  and  left  the  manufacturing  machinery  in  place.  It 
consisted  of  many  milling  machines  and  other  tools  for  dupli- 
cating. I  rented  this  to  a  man  who  had  formerly  been  my 
bookkeeper,  and  who  thought  he  could  make  money  out  of 
manufacturing.  There  was  about  $  1 8,000  worth  of  machinery. 
He  was  to  pay  me  $2,000  a  year  for  the  rent  of  the  machinery 
and  keep  it  in  good  order.  After  I  moved  to  Menlo  Park,  I 
was  very  busy  with  the  telephone  and  phonograph,  and  I 
paid  no  attention  to  this  little  arrangement.  About  three 
years  afterwards,  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  had  not  heard  at 
all  from  the  man  who  had  rented  my  machinery,  so  I  thought 
I  would  go  over  to  Newark  and  see  how  things  were  going. 
When  I  got  there  I  found  that  instead  of  being  a  machine 
shop  it  was  a  hotel!  I  have  since  been  utterly  unable  to  find 
out  what  had  become  of  the  man  or  the  machinery." 

117 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

The  modern  central  station  cannot  in  the  very  nature  of 
things  fold  up  its  tent  and  steal  away,  but  is  a  fixture.  It 
never  has  but  one  slogan  of  loyalty,  and  that  is  dedicated  to 
the  community  it  serves,  of  which  it  is  an  integral  part,  and 
with  whose  intimate  fortunes  it  has  elected  to  stand  or  fall. 
Even  in  its  contractual  relations,  of  however  secure  a  char- 
acter, must  run  recognition  of  this  fact  by  both  parties, 
toward  which  happy  appreciation  ever  tends  the  aim  of  every 
good  citizen  of  beloved  "old  New  York." 

The  directors  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company  as  this 
goes  to  press  are:  Nicholas  F  Brady,  George  F  Baker,  George 
B  Cortelyou,  Lewis  B  Gawtry,  John  A  Garver,  Donald  G 
Geddes,  John  W  Lieb,  Thomas  E  Murray,  Edgar  Palmer  and 
William  G  Rockefeller. 

The  officers  are:  Nicholas  F  Brady,  president,  Thomas  E 
Murray,  vice-president,  John  W  Lieb,  vice-president,  Fred- 
erick Smith,  treasurer,  David  Darlington,  assistant  treasurer, 
Walter  Neumuller,  secretary,  Frederick  W  Jesser,  assistant 
secretary,  H  M  Edwards,  auditor. 


118 


CHAPTER  XI 


Relations  with  the  City  Street  Lighting- 
High  Pressure  Water  Supply 

NEW  YORK  CITY  is  physically,  more  largely  the  crea- 
tion of  Edison  than  of  any  other  living  man,  besides 
which  for  half  a  century  he  has  lived  and  moved  among  its 
inhabitants  more  than  among  any  other  group  of  people. 
Many  a  New  Yorker  has  seen  the  quick  twinkle  of  those  eyes 
and  felt  the  strong  grip  of  that  expressive  hand  since,  a  strug- 
gling young  telegrapher,  he  drifted  into  town  one  morning, 
in  1869,  on  the  Boston  boat,  much  as  penniless  young  Benja- 
min Franklin,  roaming  also  far  from  the  Hub,  landed  hungry 
just  two  hundred  years  ago  in  Philadelphia,  to  the  upbuild- 
ing of  which  great  city  he  too  contributed  nobly  creative 
work.  One  can  hardly  think  of  a  public  utility  service  to 
whose  proper  functioning  Edison  has  not  lent  a  hand  since 


in  those  dim  old  "Black 
Panic  he  restored  to  the 
Street  their  dislocated 
few  deft  touches.  Next  to 
the  first  Franklin  and  of 
Yorkers  have  watched  at 
come  their  splendid  vir- 
deep  in  the  institutions 
Some  day  the  opportun- 
future  historian  to  dwell 
and  achievements  of  the 
the  lightning  from  the 
still  taming  it  to  multifari- 
as  one  hears  impatient 
questionnaires  or  notes, 
quite  revolutionary  finan- 


Friday"  days  of  the  Gold 
paralyzed  brokers  of  Wall 
"ticker"  central,  with  a 
the  inventive  powers  of 
the  latter  one,  whom  New 
close  range  for  fifty  years, 
tues  as  citizens,  printed 
they  helped  to  found, 
ity  will  present  itself  to  a 
upon  the  parallel  lives 
man  who  first  snatched 
skies  and  he  who  later  is 
ous  benefits.  Meantime, 
comments  on  the  famous 
scathing  criticisms  on 
cial  plans  for  currency, 


119 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

the  thoughts  of  the  writer  go  back  involuntarily  to  the  equally 
prolific  mind  and  altogether  unlimited  scope  of  investigation 
indulged  in  by  the  Sage  of  the  Schuylkill  as  his  curiosity 
ranged  over  every  topic  to  which  a  human  intellect  could  be 
addressed.  It  is  just  that  way  mankind  arrives  at  such  inesti- 
mable boons  as  Franklin  stoves  and  Edison  lamps. 

One  of  the  queerest  censuses  ever  taken  was  carried  out  in 
1882  in  old  Manhattan  when  the  great  inventor  was  laying 
broad,  deep  and  strong  the  foundations  of  his  greatest  or- 
ganic creation,  The  New  York  Edison  Company  of  today. 
His  own  statement  about  it  lies  at  this  moment  before  the 
eye:  "I  had  a  great  idea  of  the  sale  of  electric  power  to  large 
factories,  etc,  of  the  electric  lighting  system;  and  I  got  all  the 
insurance  maps  in  New  York  City,  and  located  all  the  hoists, 
printing  presses,  and  other  places  where  they  used  power. 
I  put  all  these  on  the  maps,  and  allowed  for  the  necessary 
copper  in  the  mains  to  carry  current  to  them  when  I  put  the 
mains  down;  so  that  when  these  places  took  current  from  the 
station  I  would  be  prepared  to  furnish  it  because  I  had  al- 
lowed for  it  in  the  wiring.  There  were,  I  remember,  554 
hoists  in  that  district.  In  some  places,  a  horse  would  be  taken 
upstairs  to  run  a  hoist,  and  would  be  kept  there  until  he 
died."  What  a  lovely  glimpse  of  contemporaneous  New 
York,  with  incipient  "Ls,"  no  "Tubes,"  no  skyscrapers,  no 
electric  elevators,  no  incandescent  lamps,  no  electric  motors, 
no  electric  vehicles. 

It  would  be  difficult,  indeed,  to  enumerate,  or  delimit,  the 
relations  through  which  the  City  of  New  York  comes  into 
touch  with  The  New  York  Edison  Company.  To  traverse  the 
subject  would  be  to  review  the  functions  of  almost  all  the 
city  departments,  besides  which  it  has  direct  relations  with 
many  of  the  state  departments.  In  New  York  State  the 
public  utilities  such  as  The  New  York  Edison  Company  are  all 
under  the  supervision  of  a  Public  Service  Commission,  of 
which  there  are  usually  one  for  each  commonwealth.  It 

120 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  CITY 

would  be  rather  difficult  to  find  an  element  of  management, 
or  even  of  operation,  where  the  public  is  directly  concerned, 
that  does  not  come  within  the  scope  of  these  public  service 
commissions,  in  place  of  the  earlier  popular  but  now  unfash- 
ionable doctrine  of  laissezfaire,  laissez  aller.  If  there  is  one 
dictum  that  the  modern  utility  has  to  keep  in  mind  it  is: 
"Watch  your  step!"  for  there  are 
keen  bureaucratic  eyes  watching  it. 
The  broad  sweep  of  all  the  modern 
policy  of   administration    through 
boards  of  national  and  state  control 
is  perhaps  hardly  yet  seen  at  its  full; 
but  it  is  at  least  recognized  as  in- 
finitely better  than  the  state  owner- 
ship and  operation  which  during  the 
"late  unpleasantness"  went  into  the 
debacle  of  proved  incompetency  and 
bankruptcy.    Today   most   of  the 
leading  European  democratic  states 
are  yearning  to  wash  their  hands  of 
all  management  of  private   enter- 
prise and  coming  to  the  saner  Ameri- 
can method  well  illustrated  in  the 
practice  of  New  York  State. 

Meantime,  "we  settle  it  as  we  go,"  as  the  old  Latin  tag  had 
it,  and  The  New  York  Edison  Company  can  certainly  refer 
with  some  self-congratulation  to  the  long  record  of  its  har- 
monious relations  with  the  State  Public  Service  Commissions, 
in  translating  their  edicts  into  living  rules  of  corporate  con- 
duct, whether  they  affect  sets  of  accounts,  dealings  with  the 
public,  or  engineering  practice.  But  when  that  is  all  nicely 
disposed  of,  there  is  still  the  city  administration  to  confront 
with  its  fluctuating,  ever-changing  personnel  and  politics, 
and  also  a  continuing  Department  of  Water  Supply,  Gas 
and  Electricity.  Here,  again  the  relations  of  the  Com- 


121 


BROOKLYN  BRIDGE 
Etching  by  E  Horter 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  CITY 

pany  are  most  amicable;  but  over  and  beyond  all  that  are 
the  commercial  connections  with  practically  all  of  the  de- 
partments of  a  city  whose  annual  budget  runs  to  a  total  of 
$350,000,000,  and  which  necessarily  buys  large  quantities  of 
light,  heat,  and  power.  Fortunately,  a  tendency  that  at  one 
time  manifested  itself  to  indulge  in  an  expensive  isolated 
plant  for  every  municipal  institution  or  building  has  died 
away  before  the  repeated  proof  of  the  excessive  cost  of  such 
an  indulgence  to  the  taxpayer;  and  the  result  is  that  yearly 
the  New  York  Edison  service  becomes  more  and  more  an 
economical  feature  in  reducing  the  expense,  while  adding  to 
the  benefit  of  the  vast  group  of  humanitarian  agencies  main- 
tained by  a  large-hearted  city  for  the  welfare  of  its  sick,  halt, 
and  lame,  its  deficients  and  its  children.  In  this  chapter, 
however,  note  will  be  made  only  of  two  leading  contractual 
services  to  the  city— the  street  lighting  and  the  high  pressure 
water  supply  for  fire  purposes. 

The  whole  history  of  electric  street  lighting  has  been  bril- 
liantly illustrated  in  New  York  City.  The  first  long  chapter 
of  the  arc  lamp  may  now  be  regarded  as  definitely  closed,  but 
a  second,  stretching  on  into  the  indefinitely  remote  future 
depends  on  its  victorious  rival — the  incandescent  lamp — 
proved  after  long  years  of  slow  approach  as  a  worthy  suc- 
cessor, and  very  often  occupying  the  same  posts  and  fixtures. 
The  New  Yorker  does  not  have  to  be  very  old  to  remember 
tall  towers  standing  in  what  were  then  "uptown"  parks,  and 
shedding  from  the  giddy  altitude  of  160  feet  the  white  beams 
of  clusters  of  Brush  arc  lamps  over  the  area  between 
Union  and  Madison  Squares.  Through  a  long  period,  the 
principal  New  York  avenues  were  lighted  by  the  old  series 
arc  lamps,  then  in  part  superseded  by  the  enclosed  type  of 
arc  lamp.  Each  lamp  was  rated  as  equal  to  three  policemen, 
and  they  did  add  immeasurably  to  the  safety  of  the  life  and 
property  of  the  citizens.  All  that  lighting  was  done  by  a  suc- 
cession of  arc  lighting  companies  long  since  vanished,  whose 

123 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


functions  were  gradually 
York  Edison  Company 
Companies. 

The  inheritance  of  the 
from  the  prior  arc  regime 
and  summarized,  as  the 
tinued  its  own  overlap- 
earlier  civilization  often 
1880,  the  general  type  in 
first  put  in  an  appearance 


taken  over  by  The  New 
and    its    Allied    Electric 


i 


New  York  Edison  system 
must  here  be  catalogued 
arc  lighting  art  still  con- 
ping  career,  just  as  an 
lingers  in  a  later  one.  In 
use  when  theEdison  lamps 
was  a  9.6  ampere  "2000 
candle  power"  arc  in  a  clear  globe.  Then,  in  1895,  came  the 
"enclosed"  arc  of  6.6  amperes  in  an  opal  inner  globe  and  an 
outer  clear  one,  cutting  the  lumens  per  watt  at  least  50  per 
cent.  It  won  out  even  in  spite  of  that  handicap  because  of  its 
greater  steadiness  and  because  one  trim  of  carbons  would 
carry  it  for  90  hours.  But  soon  the  irrepressible  incandescent 
lamp,  now  with  metallic  filament  and  gas-filled  bulb,  began 
to  develop  an  efficiency  that  made  it  possible  to  substitute 
it  lamp  for  lamp  for  the  arcs.  Hence  it  is  convenient  now  to 
retrace  one's  steps  hurriedly  over  the  thoroughfares  on 


which  with  all  this  arc 
New  York  Edison  system 
and  take  a  glance  at 
that  bar  the  night." 

The  first  arc  posts  were 
conscience,  but  as  early  as 
was  seen,  for  in  that  year 
by  The  New  York  Edison 
posts,  a  twin  fixtures 
These  were  made  by  the 
the  Columbus  Celebra- 
under  the  direction  of  Mr 
president  of  the  Edison 
Commissioner  of  Pub- 
a  trip  abroad  said:  "No 


lamp    paraphernalia    the 
has   "blazed  its  way,"- 
thelamp  posts,  "sentinels 

commercial  enough  in  all 
1892  the  "Edison  touch" 
Fifth  Avenue  was  lighted 
Company  with  artistic 
carrying  two  lamps. 
Bergmann  Company  for 
tion,  on  plans  developed 
R  R  Bowker,  then  vice- 
Company.  GenLTCollis, 
lie  Works  returning  from 
street  lighting  in  Paris  or 


124 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  CITY 

London  excels  the  Edison  lamps  for  beauty  and  illumina- 
tion." Individual  or  single  arc  light  posts  still  continued, 
however,  especially  with  the  coming  of  the  enclosed  arc 
lamp,  of  which  the  Company  had  at  one  time  in  use  some 
46,000.  In  1904,  the  fundamental  change  was  made  unifying 
the  source  of  current  supply  for  all  the  arc  lamps  in  Manhat- 
tan; and  thereafter  for  several  years  the  multiple  enclosed 
lamp  was  generally  used.  Moreover,  the  arc  lamp  was  mean- 
time adopted  by  the  municipal  authorities  for  buildings 
wherein  large  areas  had  to  be  effectively  illuminated,  notably 
the  great  armories  of  which  the  metropolis  on  Manhattan  is 
justly  proud. 

The  New  York  Edison  Company  long  since  reached  stand- 
ards of  high  artistic  excellence  in  its  public  lamp  posts  as  any 
one  traveling  the  streets  may  see  for  himself,  but  it  is  not  per- 
haps generally  realized  that  the  policy  thus  developed  dates 
back  at  least  twenty-five  years.  A  report  of  the  old  Edison 
Electric  Illuminating  Company  of  1897  says,  for  instance: 
"Development  of  enclosed  arc  lamps  has  made  possible  a 
similar  remarkable  development  in  low-tension  street  light- 
ing. After  a  careful  collection  of  views  and  plans  of  arc  lamp 
posts  used  in  various  cities  here  and  abroad,  the  engineering 
department  designed  a  new  form  of  post  for  city  lighting,  of 
artistic  pattern.  This  has  met  with  general  approval.  This 
post  bears  on  its  base  the  arms  of  the  city  and  the  seal  of  the 
Edison  Company,  and  is  surmounted  by  a  graceful  curve  in 
place  of  the  awkward  yard  arm."  But  as  soon  as  the  incan- 
descent lamp  was  ready  for  street  service,  it  was  taken  up, 
and  other  decorative  fixtures  not  less  beautiful  than  the 
greatly  admired  "Bishop's  Crook,"  were  developed  for  the 
parks  and  parkways,  and  with  these  for  a  beginning  no  fewer 
than  4000  tungsten  lamps  had  been  added  by  1912.  The  total 
number  of  electric  street  lamps  in  the  boroughs  of  Manhattan 
and  the  Bronx  now  served  by  The  New  York  Edison  Com- 
pany and  Allied  Electric  Companies  reaches  a  total  of  30,000. 

125 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  volume  of  light  from  "signs"  on 
some  New  York  thoroughfare  is  so  great,  it  has  been  seriously 
proposed  to  leave  to  it  local  street  illumination  and  turn  out 
the  city  lights  at  such  points.  It  is  quite  pertinent,  therefore, 
to  interject  here  a  few  remarks  about  the  sign  lighting  done 
by  The  New  York  Edison  Company.  The  "Great  White 
Way,"  where  sign  lighting  has  reached  its  peak,  is  known  all 
over  the  world  as  the  nickname  of  the  theatrical  section  of 
Broadway.  No  book  of  travel  by  visiting  foreigners  is  without 
its  reference  to  the  brilliant,  fantastic  illumination  with 
which  New  York  nightly  throws  her  own  rainbow  aurora 
borealis  into  the  skies.  W7hen  some  one  spoke  of  the  magnifi- 
cent decorative  illumination  of  the  Buffalo  Exposition  with 
his  lamps  in  1901,  Edison  took  his  bowler  hat — pretty  capa- 
cious, it  is  true — and  said  that  all  the  carbon  filaments  doing 
it  could  be  put  in  that  container.  Such  container  would  amply 
hold  all  the  tungsten  filaments  in  the  Great  White  Way.  But 
to  visualize  those  fragile  filaments  there  must  be  thousands 
of  kilowatts  of  Edison  service. 

Fires  are  also  among  New  York  spectacles,  alas  bringing 
loss  and  desolation.  In  1920,  those  fires  were  14,628  in  New 
York  City,  and  the  direct  loss  was  $18,806,908,  the  indirect 
loss  being  incalculable;  and  the  worry  of  it  is  that  while  the 
number  has  been  greater  in  other  years,  the  value  of  the  loss 
mounts  steadily,  and  is  100  per  cent  higher  than  ten  years 
ago.  One  sometimes  thinks  that  words  such  as  "fireproof" 
and  "inflammable"  need  new  definition,  but  rewriting  a  dic- 
tionary is  slow  work,  and  meantime  the  destruction  goes  on, 
despite  the  efforts  of  the  New  York  Fire  Department  and 
the  insurance  companies  to  check  it,  and  lessen  the  fine  for 
carelessness  that  now  amounts  to  10  per  cent  of  all  the  new 
annual  building  construction  in  the  city.  No  city  can  boast 
of  a  more  competent,  efficient,  brave  and  progressive  Fire 
Department  than  New  York  with  its  rank  and  file  of  6000 
men  in  95  highly-trained,  well-equipped  fire  engine  compan- 

126 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  CITY 

ies,  and  a  flotilla  all  its  own  operating  along  the  extensive 
river  fronts.  Back  of  these  regimented  firefighters  lies  the 
superb  water  supply  of  the  town  draining  two  great  water- 
sheds to  the  north  from  which  600,000,000  gallons  can  be 
drawn  daily  throughout  each  year.  But  all  this  water  and  all 
this  human  skill  has  been  found  inadequate  to  cope  with 
modern  fires  of  magnitude  or  safeguard  against  widespread 
conflagrations  such  as  in  the  past  devastated  large  areas  of 
valuable  property.  The  first  little  fire  engine  brought  from 
England  by  sailing  ship,  in  1731,  and  worked  by  hand,  had  to 
get  its  pressure  from  relays  of  volunteer  "vamps."  Just  as 
the  crews  of  pumpers  were  replaced  none  too  soon  by  steam 
fire  engines,  so  now  the  modern  Fire  Department  of  New 
York  City  has  from  the  New  York  Edison  system  at  instant 
call  a  high-pressure  fire  water  supply  service  of  inestimable 
value,  at  an  absurdly  small  cost.  It  is  probably  not  generally 
known  that  the  high-pressure  electric  fire  service  system  on 
Manhattan  Island  covers  the  territory  bounded  by  Thirty- 
fourth  Street,  Madison  Avenue,  Twenty-fourth  Street, 
Lexington  Avenue,  Fourteenth  Street,  Third  Avenue,  Bow- 
ery, Houston  Street,  East  River,  Battery,  North  River.  At 
Gansevoort  and  West  Streets  and  at  Oliver  and  South 
Streets,  are  strategically  located  two  pumping  stations,  each 
of  which  has  six  huge  electrically  driven  centrifugal  pumps. 
Either  fresh  or  salt-sea  water  can  be  used.  With  a  powerful 
motor  behind  it,  each  pump  can  deliver  3000  gallons  a  min- 
ute. What  this  means  is  that  the  two  pumping  stations  are  the 
equivalent  of  fifty  fire  engines.  About  128  miles  of  water 
mains  constitute  the  distribution  network,  the  mains  rang- 
ing from  8  to  24  inches  in  diameter,  leading  to  2700  four- 
nozzle  hydrants.  The  pumping  plants  are,  of  course,  closely 
tied  in  electrically  with  the  New  York  Edison  generating 
plants  and  sub-stations;  and  some  700  telephones  com- 
municating with  Fire  Headquarters  and  the  Edison  system, 
hold  the  service  at  instantaneous  beck  and  call. 

127 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

Sufficient  power  is  at  all  times  held  in  reserve,  by  the  elec- 
tric company,  so  that  by  closing  the  switches  at  the  pumping 
stations  the  pumps  can  be  immediately  operated  at  full 
capacity.  In  a  recent  fire  the  demand  at  the  pumping  stations 
went  to  5800  kilowatts,  amounting  to  8000  horsepower, 
which  is  several  times  the  entire  capacity  of  the  average 
central  electric  station  of  the  United  States.  The  confidence 
of  the  Company  in  its  ability  to  provide  this  service  with 
absolute  reliability  is  reflected  in  the  quality  of  its  general 
service  and  is  indicated  in  the  contract  with  the  city  for  the 
service  wherein  a  penalty  of  $400.00  per  minute  is  imposed 
for  each  minute  of  failure  to  provide  service  after  three 
minutes. 


128 


CHAPTER  XII 

Relations  with  the  Public  and  Public 
Service  Commission — Rates 

IN  the  old  Pearl  Street  days,  Edison  gloried  in  censuses.  He 
wanted  to  know.  They  call  them  "surveys"  now,  but  the 
investigator  gets  off  at  about  the  same  place.  Mention  has  al- 
ready been  made  of  some  of  these  early  efforts  to  size  up  the 
community,  including  even  its  old  horses  in  elevator  shafts. 
Here  is  another  Edison-like  glimpse:  "It  is  true  that  Sprague 
figured  out  mains  for  us,  of  new  stations,  while  he  was  at 
Brockton,  on  a  new  mathematical  basis:  but  we  already  had 
a  good  system  of  determining  the  size  of  the  mains  and  of 
laying  them  out  in  miniature  in  German  silver  wire.  We  made 
a  complete  survey  of  a  place  before  figuring  them  out.  This 
system  was  so  perfect  that  we  could  go  into  a  man's  store  and 
say:  'Your  gas  bill  in  December  was  $62.40!'  When  he  looked 
it  up,  it  was  usually  within  5  per  cent  of  it.  We  sometimes 
found  that  our  estimates  were  too  small,  and  I  soon  dis- 
covered the  cause  of  this.  We  went  to  a  place  on  Sixth 
Avenue.  The  man's  bill  ought  to  have  been  $16.  It  was  $32. 
We  took  a  delicate  meter  up  there,  and  found  that  there  was  a 
leak  which  had  been  going  on  for  fifteen  years." 

Under  the  direction  of  Mr  Arthur  Williams,  general  com- 
mercial manager  of  the  Company,  another  survey  has  just 
been  completed,  comparable  in  scope  and  importance  with 
the  'Vital  statistic"  ones  of  the  National  and  State  Govern- 
ments. It  reveals  a  lot,  explains  a  lot,  suggests  a  lot,  and  its 
data  may  be  said  to  carry  the  germs  of  future  corporate 
policy  in  dealing  with  the  public. 

Manhattan  has  not  far  short  of  90,000  buildings  to- 
day, but,  such  is  the  trend  of  the  times,  only  one-third  of 

129 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

these  are  single  family  dwellings;  although  that  is  still  a 
large  proportion  in  view  of  the  tendency  of  New  Yorkers  to 
become  ' 'cliff-dwellers/'  residents  in  lofty  apartments  and 
tenements.  Moreover,  it  might  be  that  in  this  day  of  the 
kitchenette,  and  of  absentee,  retired  domestics  living  on  their 
incomes  in  Europe,  the  vogue  of  electrical  apparatus  in  the 
apartments  would  be  much  more  pronounced  than  in  in- 
dividual homes.  Such  is  broadly  the  fact.  A  survey  made  of 
one  of  the  new  apartment  houses  uptown  develops  the  in- 
teresting and  significant  fact  that  the  electric  appliance  load 
there  exceeds  either  the  lighting  load  or  the  ''power"  load, 
such  as  elevators  or  water  pumping.  It  was  found  that  in  this 
building  the  New  York  Edison  lighting  duty  was  114  kilo- 
watts; the  total  power  load  was  only  128,  but  the  total  load 
from  electrical  appliances  reached  the  extraordinary  figure 
of  148  kilowatts.  Such  a  revelation  does  not  "give  us  pause," 
but  stimulates  to  further  propaganda.  What  would  be  the 
appliance  load  for  the  whole  city  on  equivalent  terms?  In  this 
building  there  are  3363  lighting  sockets  and  385  outlets  in 
baseboards,  walls  and  floors.  In  a  single  apartment,  however, 
it  ran  to  43  lighting  sockets  as  against  21  wall  base  outlets. 
The  average  in  the  smallest  apartments  was  as  4  to  i*.  Sup- 
pose even  that  ratio  applied  the  city  over. 

This  is  all  intensely  interesting,  especially  as  it  is  remem- 
bered that  when  Mr  Edward  H  Johnson  began  his  bold 
campaign  for  the  "Electric  Home"  forty  years  ago,  with  bril- 
liant examples  on  Manhattan  and  at  Greenwich,  Connecti- 
cut, not  even  yet  surpassed,  he  was  without  one  single  ap- 
pliance "made  for  the  trade,"  or  for  the  public.  Domestic 
electricity  was  a  terra  incognita,  but  today  hardly  a  wired 
American  home  is  so  humble  as  to  be  without  one  or  more  of 
the  five  hundred  clever  bits  of  electrical  hardware  that  justify 
to  the  average  home-dweller  the  assertion  of  the  philoso- 
pher, "You  were  made  for  enjoyment,  and  the  world  is  filled 
with  things  you  will  enjoy."  Of  some  of  these  myriad  ap- 

130 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  PUBLIC 

pliances,  the  relative  popularity  is  brought  out  in  the  survey. 
Although  the  apartment  house  has  its  own  semi-electric  hotel 
kitchen,  the  tenants  had  125  electric  cooking  devices,  from 
large  ranges  to  toasters.  There  were  seventy-four  grills  and 
small  stoves,  two  egg  boilers,  three  large  stoves,  two  hot 
plates,  one  waffle  iron,  twenty-three  percolators,  and  eighteen 
toasters.  It  is  odd  that  only  one  heating  pad  appeared  on  the 
list.  Similarly,  only  three  hair  curlers,  two  hair  driers  and 
one  vibrator  are  mentioned. 

Turning  to  useful  articles  that  are  remote  from  personal 
adornment,  it  may  be  noted  that  one  of  the  ranges  has  a 
capacity  of  6500  watts,  and  two  of  4500,  and  so  on  down  to 
ten  of  from  1300  to  1500  watts.  Then  there  are  dishwashers, 
knife  cleaners  and  sharpeners,  two  electric  washing  ma- 
chines, one  electric  ironer,  and,  marvelously,  only  one  lonely 
electric  sewing  machine.  One  of  the  larger  apartments,  as 
self-contained  as  any  high-grade  residence,  had  a  practically 
complete  equipment  including  washing  and  ironing  ma- 
chines, electrical  refrigerator,  vacuum  cleaner,  and  exhaust 
blower  in  the  kitchen,  with  all  the  smaller  articles. 

This  summary  is  not  presented  here  merely  as  a  glimpse  at 
the  electrified  domestic  economy  of  modern  New  York,  nor  to 
give  an  inventory  of  the  consumption  devices  other  than 
lamps  in  large  use,  nor  to  illustrate  how  infinite  is  the  use- 
fulness of  the  protean  servant  of  everybody — but  chiefly  to 
emphasize  the  genuine  impossibility  of  now  metering  current 
as  it  was  first  done  in  terms  of  a  i6-candle  power  lamp  hour. 
Edison  in  the  early  days  had  a  preference  for  selling  light  by 
the  lamp  hour  rather  than  electrical  energy  by  the  kilowatt 
hour;  but  there  is  no  meter,  and  never  will  be  one,  that  can 
differentiate  between  the  employments  of  current,  even  if 
they  were  roughly  grouped  into  classes,  to  which  a  sliding 
scale  might  be  applied.  The  nearest  approach  to  anything  of 
the  kind  is  seen  in  the  New  York  Edison  rate  schedule,  and  a 
few  words  may  now  be  profitably  devoted  to  a  topic  which 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

is  as  large  and  important  as  any  other  over  which  this 
"survey"  of  the  New  York  Edison  has  ranged. 

Just  as  there  has  been  development  and  improvement  in  the 
mechanical  and  electrical  resources,  so  has  there  been  con- 
stant broadening  of  the  policies  of  the  Company,  as  it  has 
grown  in  size  and  importance  in  the  service  of  the  city.  In 
the  best  of  present-day  engineering  practice,  one  finds  the 
underlying  principles  of  Mr  Edison's  original  work  at  the 
Pearl  Street  Station.  So  may  be  found  today,  in  the  Com- 
pany's conception  of  its  obligations  to  the  public,  a  contin- 
uance of  principles  recognized  and  adopted  by  Edison  in  his 
larger  conceptions  of  the  public  service,  forty  years  ago. 
Then,  as  now,  the  first  thought  was  service,  good  service,  at 
fair  prices,  available  to  all,  with  a  uniformity  of  standards 
and  terms,  then  recognized  as  principles  of  business  conduct 
by  Edison  and  the  group  of  men  associated  with  him,  as  they 
are  today  recognized  and  accepted  throughout  the  land,  and 
in  fact  throughout  the  civilized  world  where  public  utilities 
are  available  to  the  people. 

One  of  the  indelible  impressions  left  by  Mr  Edison  and 
the  men  whom  he  selected  to  carry  on  his  work  from  the  be- 
ginning, is  that  of  unfailing  courtesy  and  consideration  to 
those  with  whom  they  come  in  contact,  whether  subordinates 
in  the  service,  or  the  general  public.  Thus,  courtesy  in  the 
Company  became  an  established  habit,  and,  in  the  early  days 
of  the  Company's  efforts,  undoubtedly,  had  much  to  do  with 
its  rapid  growth  and  development.  Edison  himself,  innately 
courteous,  was  ever  a  "good  mixer" — likes  folks.  Unfailing 
courtesy  was  recognized  as  one  of  the  Company's  obligations 
to  the  public,  and  very  early  in  its  career  a  rule  was  adopted 
that  all  employees  should  show  the  same  degree  of  attention 
and  courtesy  to  the  smallest  customer  that  would  be  given 
to  a  director  of  the  Company.  No  call  for  service  was  too 
small,  or  seemingly  unimportant,  to  be  neglected  or  ignored; 
no  call  for  service  demanded  so  much  of  inconvenience  or 

132 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  PUBLIC 

attention,  even  under  adverse  conditions,  as  to  be  in  the 
slightest  degree  neglected.  Electric  service,  in  such  a  city  as 
New  York,  must  be  continuous  throughout  the  day  and  night 
and,  whenever  called  for,  regardless  of  cost  or  Company  or 
employee  convenience,  is  given  with  immediate  and  ade- 
quate response.  This  has  ever  been  one  of  the  guiding  prin- 
ciples of  the  Company. 

From  its  earliest  days  to  the  present  time,  the  Company 
has  never  failed  to  appreciate  that  the  most  priceless  posses- 
sion of  a  public  utility  is  the  good  will  and  favorable  public 
opinion  of  the  community  it  serves.  With  each  passing  year, 
the  importance  of  public  sentiment  in  the  control  of  all  af- 
fairs, private  and  public,  national,  international,  has  shown 
an  enormous  appreciation.  To  such  an  extent  has  developed 
the  power  of  public  opinion  in  the  decision  of  public  ques- 
tions, that  it  is  not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  no  utility  can 
be  today  successfully  conducted  without  a  substantial  meas- 
ure of  public  approval.  This  pertains  not  only  to  sentiment 
on  the  fairness  of  rates  and  the  character  of  the  service,  but 
to  the  consideration  accorded  to  employees,  and  to  that 
enormously  larger,  heterogeneous  audience  of  which  the 
community  itself  is  comprised.  This  is  one  of  the  accepted 
maxims  of  today,  and  it  is  gratifying  that  this  Company, 
the  first  to  demonstrate  in  the  largest  sense  the  practical  ap- 
plication and  the  great  public  usefulness  of  Mr  Edison's 
electrical  work,  adopted  these  principles.  Their  earlier  sug- 
gestion and  practical  adoption  were  just  as  much  a  part  of 
the  epoch-marking  system  of  lighting  that  Edison  devised 
as  was  the  system  itself  in  its  mechanical  and  electrical  ap- 
plication. 

In  the  light  of  progressive  utility  management  of  the 
present-day,  it  may  seem  almost  trivial  to  mention  rules 
which  call  for  absolutely  truthful  statements  to  customers 
regarding  their  meter  readings  and  bills,  and  other  matters 
pertaining  to  their  services;  or  to  speak  of  the  adoption  of 

133 


THE  NEW  YORK  SKYSCRAPER  IS  A  BUILDING  CLOSELY  ASSOCI- 
ATED WITH  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  ELECTRICAL  SERVICE 

Etching  by  E  Horter 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  PUBLIC 

the  principle  that  for  like  service  under  like  conditions,  like 
rates  must  be  uniformly  made;  or  to  note  that  politeness  and 
consideration  must  begin  with  the  office  boy  and  with  the 
least  conspicuous  of  the  Company's  outdoor  representatives. 
Indeed,  to  refer  to  these  features  of  public  service  today  may 
seem  redundant,  and  yet  it  is  with  great  satisfaction  that  the 
Company  points  to  their  adoption  as  matters  of  policy  from 
its  pioneer  days. 

Again,  in  the  matter  of  the  education  of  employees,  today 
so  almost  universally  provided  for  in  the  large  establish- 
ments of  the  country — and  yet  the  Company  recalls  the  time 
when  its  own  schools  in  technique,  beginning  with  Johnson's 
little  classes  for  house  wiremen — in  accounting,  and  com- 
mercial education,  were  new  and  novel,  and  without  prece- 
dent amongst  the  utilities  anywhere.  Remembering  that  the 
men  in  charge  of  the  utilities,  to  a  very  large  extent,  have 
grown  up  from  the  ranks,  and  were  at  first  largely  drawn 
from  artisans  who  had  been  taught  the  mechanical  trades, 
with  better  knowledge  of  machines  made  of  metals,  than  of 
human  machines,  made  of  flesh  and  blood,  beings  sensitive 
to  neglect  or  indifference,  it  can  be  well  understood  why  so 
much  of  an  adverse  public  opinion  was  usually  created  in 
the  earlier  days  of  some  of  the  utilities.  It  was  not  that  the 
men  placed  in  command  were  unanxious  to  serve  largely 
and  well,  but  that  their  vision  was  limited  to  the  four  walls 
of  their  stations,  or  the  outlying  limits  of  their  distributing 
systems,  and  the  solution  of  pressing  mechanical  and  elec- 
trical problems.  They  felt  their  obligation  to  cease  with  the 
development  and  the  delivery  of  good  service,  with  little,  if 
any,  of  the  human  element  involved  brought  to  anything 
near  a  like  condition  of  development  and  perfection.  It  is, 
of  course,  generally  recognized  today  that  the  public  inter- 
course of  our  utilities  calls  for  a  mentality  and  personal  de- 
velopment in  keeping,  and  comparable  with,  the  very  best 
engineering  and  technical  skill.  And  once  again,  it  is  a  matter 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

of  gratification  that  in  recognizing  these  conditions  and  the 
comparative  need  for  the  "trained  mind"  in  every  branch 
of  the  utility  service,  The  New  York  Edison  Company  has 
been  many  times  a  pioneer  in  hitherto  unexplored  fields  of 
public  service  development. 

In  such  a  city  as  New  York,  security  of  service  and  un- 
limited sources  and  resources  behind  it,  are  of  greater  im- 
portance than  the  mere  question  of  the  cost  of  the  service. 
Regardless  of  cost,  no  element  of  security  can  be  omitted. 
Considerations  are  involved  which  far  outweigh  any  ques- 
tion of  expense.  Examples  are  found  in  the  illumination  of 
places  of  amusement  where  fire  might  mean  panic,  serious 
accident,  and  even  loss  of  life;  or  in  the  elevator  service  of  the 
larger  buildings  of  the  city,  where  any  failure  at  all  would 
cause  serious  annoyance,  and  repeated  failure  would  so 
greatly  mar  the  standing  of  the  building  in  the  eyes  of  its 
tenants  and  the  public  that  other  methods  of  "vertical  rapid 
transit"  would  have  to  be  adopted.  An  example  is  seen  again, 
in  the  illumination  of  the  streets  at  night,  where  failure  of  the 
service  would  lead  to  great  increase  in  crime,  and  even  to  loss 
of  life  or  limb.  It  is  in  recognition  of  these  considerations  as  a 
part  of  its  obligation  to  the  public  that  the  Company* -has 
sought  to  provide  the  last  degree  of  security,  mechanical  and 
electrical,  in  generating  stations,  sub-stations,  and  the  under- 
ground system,  and  in  the  development  of  its  personnel  to 
the  highest  degree  of  mechanical,  electrical  and  scientific  at- 
tainment. No  expense  has  been  too  great,  no  detail  too 
trivially  small,  to  call  for  the  highest  attainable  degree  of  per- 
fection in  every  department  in  the  recognition  of  its  public 
obligations. 

As  important  as  are  all  the  other  considerations  entering 
into  a  broad  public  policy,  the  question  of  rates  has  never 
been  neglected,  and  its  treatment  constitutes  a  bright  chap- 
ter in  the  history  of  the  Company.  At  the  beginning,  Mr 
Edison  adopted  a  rate  which  was  fairly  comparable  with  the 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  PUBLIC 

cost  of  gas,  as  then  established.  In  those  early  days,  the  term 
used  with  the  customer  was  the  lamp  hour,  not  the  kilowatt 
hour,  which  was  not  adopted  until  about  1890.  Discounts 
were  allowed  for  each  payment,  and  in  some  instances  special 
contracts  were  made  in  recognition  of  the  importance  of  larger 
installations,  for  which  schedules  had  not  been  established. 
Prior  to  September,  1902,  the  rates  to  small  customers  ap- 
proximated, on  the  average,  20  cents  a  kilowatt  hour,  or 
something,  perhaps,  in  excess  of  that  figure.  The  price  in- 
cluded the  supply  of  incandescent  lamps,  for  which  the  cost 
was  in  the  neighborhood  of  i  cent  a  kilowatt  hour.  Such  dis- 
counts as  were  then  allowed  were  based  upon  the  amount  of 
the  bills;  but  as  these  discounts  didnot  begin  until  the  monthly 
amount  reached  or  exceeded  ?ioo,  the  small  customer,  and 
for  those  days  even  the  comparatively  large  consumer,  paid, 
as  indicated  above,  in  the  neighborhood  of  20  cents  a  kilo- 
watt hour.  Even  this  price,  which  in  these  days  may  seem 
very  high,  led  to  very  little  complaint.  Electric  light  was 
recognized  as  constituting  a  marvelous  advance  in  the  science 
of  illumination.  It  possessed  many  elements  of  advantage, 
some  of  them  of  a  pecuniary  nature,  in  the  shop,  factory,  busi- 
ness and  home  life;  and  the  public  was  willing  to  pay  for  such 
a  splendid  commodity  what  was  judged  a  fair  price,  even 
though,  measured  by  the  standards  of  today,  it  was  a  com- 
paratively high  price.  Measured  by  the  earlier  costs  of 
limited  production  and  distribution,  it  was  nothing  more  than 
a  fair  price.  The  only  complaints  to  which  the  service  was 
subjected  in  respect  to  price  were  the  results  of  variation  in 
the  monthly  bills,  where  the  reasons  for  the  variation  were 
not  understood. 

It  was  in  the  earliest  days  that  the  Company  recognized 
again  as  a  matter  of  policy  that  the  customer  in  making  a 
complaint  believed  himself  to  be  right,  and  that  he  was  en- 
titled to  have  his  complaint  studied  and  passed  upon  in  the 
light  of  this  belief  on  the  Company's  part.  No  complaint, 

137 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

however  small  the  amount  involved,  or  seemingly  foolish, 
was  to  be  slighted  or  treated  with  other  than  the  utmost  con- 
sideration and  thoroughness  of  examination.  Every  com- 
plaint was  to  be  finally  answered  in  writing,  and  with  the 
fullest  degree  of  fairness.  It  was  recognized  that  the  cus- 
tomer, dissatisfied  with  his  bill  or  any  other  feature  of  his 
service,  was  drawn  into  that  state  of  mind  by  some  condition 
apparently  of  an  undesirable  nature  existing  in  the  service 
itself;  and  that  when  in  this  attitude,  he  offered  an  excep- 
tional opportunity  to  make  a  lasting  and  valuable  friend  of 
the  Company,  through  unfailing  courtesy  and  the  fullest 
justice,  and  to  secure  a  further  addition  to  that  degree  of 
public  approval  and  endorsement  which  the  Company  has 
already  stated,  with  the  utmost  frankness,  it  so  greatly  de- 
sires from  every  member  of  the  great  community  it  is  privi- 
leged to  serve. 

In  recognition  of  the  importance  of  meeting  customers 
courteously  and  fairly,  the  Company,  early  in  its  career, 
adopted  the  rule  that  its  commercial  men  must  not  handle 
complaints.  Partly  because,  if  good  commercial  men,  they 
were  naturally  sympathetic  to  the  complaining  customer, 
and  thus  as  such  by  their  manner  of  agreement  with  the  cus- 
tomer's attitude  as  anything  else,  rather  confirmed  and 
strengthened  the  customer's  views,  whether  justly  founded 
or  not.  They  thus  led  to  an  enhancement  of  the  feeling  of  in- 
cipient dissatisfaction  with  the  Company  rather  than  to  a 
lessening  or  the  elimination  of  that  grouch  which  under  the 
Company's  policy  could  be  inevitably  brought  about. 

In  making  a  complaint,  especially  regarding  bills,  the  cus- 
tomer is  not  always  right,  but  he  undoubtedly  always  be- 
lieves himself  right.  That  is  human.  To  meet  him  adequately, 
and  persuade  him  that  the  profoundest  wisdom  is  fallible 
somewhere,  requires  not  only  an  intimate  acquaintance  with 
the  meter,  and  the  Company's  policies,  but  a  high  degree  of 
favorable  personality,  in  order  to  avoid  misunderstanding 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  PUBLIC 

and  a  continued  feeling  of  dissatisfaction.  The  elimination  of 
all  dissatisfaction,  is  naturally  one  of  the  objects  of  every 
modern  utility  in  rendering  a  satisfactory  service  to  its  cus- 
tomers. 

But  to  return  to  the  subject  of  rates.  The  year  1890  saw 
two  changes  in  the  Company's  rate  schedules.  The  first  was 
the  substitution  of  the  kilowatt  hour  for  the  lamp  hour  as  bill- 
ing definition,  and  the  second  the  substitution  of  20  cents  a 
kilowatt  hour,  with  discounts  in  bills  exceeding  $100  monthly 
for  the  former  rate  of  1.2  cent  for  i6-candle  power  lamp  hour 
downtown,  and  i.i  cent  for  a  similar  unit  uptown.  A  further 
change  in  the  year  1900  was  the  substitution  of  a  schedule 
under  which  consumers  having  a  high  average  of  use  of  their 
installation  could  obtain  a  rate  as  low  as  5  cents  a  kilowatt 
hour  for  a  part  of  the  service — for  the  first  time  putting  into 
effect  a  schedule  through  which,  with  an  increase  in  the 
average  use,  a  reduction  in  the  rate  would  automatically 
follow.  It  may  be  of  interest  to  know  that  the  complete 
schedule  at  that  time  was  20  cents  a  kilowatt  hour  for  the 
first  hourly  average  use  of  the  connected  installation,  15  cents 
for  the  second  hour,  10  cents  for  the  third  and  fourth  hours, 
and  5  cents  for  all  in  excess  of  four  hours'  average  use.  As  in 
other  schedules,  this  price  still  included  the  supply  of  in- 
candescent lamps. 

While  possessing  the  advantage  of  giving  a  lower  rate  to 
the  consumer  using  the  service  under  more  favorable  condi- 
tions, and  tending  to  extend  the  use  of  the  service,  the  new 
schedule  possessed  the  disadvantage  that  each  installation 
must  be  surveyed  and  the  equipment  accurately  scheduled. 
Frequent  changes  in  equipment  and  in  the  size  of  lamps 
made  accuracy  in  this  respect  difficult,  if  not  impossible, 
and  led  to  a  great  deal  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  method, 
both  on  the  part  of  the  Company,  and  on  that  of  its  cus- 
tomers. This  method  of  charging,  however,  was  continued 
until  July,  1905,  although  in  the  meantime,  during  Septem- 

139 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

•*. 

ber  of  1902,  the  maximum  for  the  first  hour  was  reduced  to 
15  cents  a  kilowatt  hour,  making  the  rate  for  both  the  first 
and  the  second  hours  of  average  daily  use  of  the  connected 
installation,  while  10  cents  was  continued  as  the  rate  for  the 
third  and  fourth  hours'  average, — but  7^  cents  a  kilowatt 
hour  was  introduced  as  a  further  step  for  the  fifth  and  sixth 
hours  of  average  use,  and  5  cents  was  continued  for  all  use  in 
excess  of  six  hours. 

In  1903,  recognizing  the  importance  of  affording  service  to 
the  larger  buildings  of  the  city  for  light  and  power,  and  the 
effect  upon  general  costs  of  increased  production  and  dis- 
tribution, and  therefore,  again  upon  the  cost  of  serving  the 
small  customers  of  the  Company,  the  wholesale  schedule  was 
adopted,  which,  for  the  first  time  so  far  as  is  known,  in- 
troduced the  block  system  of  charging  for  electrical  service. 
The  maximum  rate  then  adopted  was  5  cents  a  kilowatt 
hour,  for  customers  whose  annual  bills  reached  or  exceeded 
$6000 — in  those  days,  very  large  customers.  This  rate  ex- 
cluded the  installation,  or  the  maximum  demand,  as  factors. 
It  recognized  that  the  customer  gave  the  Company  all  of  the 
electrical  patronage  he  had  to  give,  and  that  any  question  of 
average  use,  or  maximum  demand,  simply  complicated  the 
rate,  and  increased  possible  dissatisfaction  with  one  part  of 
the  service  or  another.  Therefore  in  such  a  city  as  New 
York,  it  was  to  be  avoided,  if  it  could  be  avoided,  in  fairness 
to  the  Company,  as  well  as  to  the  customer  and  the  public. 
The  principle  of  this  rate  proved  so  satisfactory  in  the  Com- 
pany's public  relations,  that  it  was  extended  for  all  retail 
service  in  July,  1905,  when  the  schedule  was  reduced  to  10 
cents  a  kilowatt  hour,  without  reference  to  average  use  or 
other  installation  factors. 

This  rate  of  10  cents  continued  until  July,  1911,  when  the 
block  method  of  charging,  which  had  proved  so  universally 
satisfactory  to  the  larger  customers  of  the  Company,  was 
adopted  throughout  the  retail  schedule  in  the  following  steps: 

140 


RELATIONS  WITH  THE  PUBLIC 

for  the  first  250  kilowatt  hours  of  monthly  consumption,  10 
cents  a  kilowatt  hour;  for  the  next  250  kilowatt  hours,  9 
cents;  for  the  next  250  kilowatt  hours,  8  cents;  and  for  the 
next  similar  block,  7  cents;  the  next  block  of  500  kilowatt 
hours  was  charged  for  at  6  cents,  and  all  excess  over  the  ag- 
gregate of  these  blocks  of  1500  kilowatt  hours  of  monthly 
consumption,  5  cents.  This  schedule  for  the  first  time  pro- 
vided an  allowance  to  those  customers  who  relieved  the 
Company  of  the  supply  of  incandescent  lamps,  who,  if  they 
guaranteed  1500  kilowatt  hours  of  monthly  consumption, 
were  allowed  to  purchase  their  lamps  independently  of  the 
service  rate,  to  offset  which  they  were  allowed  a  discount  of 
i  cent  a  kilowatt  hour. 

A  further  reduction  of  the  maximum  rate,  which,  as  will  be 
apparent,  affects  the  small  consumer,  who  should  always  re- 
ceive the  highest  degree  of  consideration  by  the  utility,  was 
made  in  1915,  when  the  maximum  price  was  reduced  to  8 
cents  a  kilowatt  hour,  this  maximum  continuing  until 
January  i,  1917,  when  it  was  reduced  to  7^  cents,  which 
continued  as  the  maximum  rate  until  July  i,  1917,  when  a 
further  reduction  of  y2  cent  was  made,  bringing  the  maxi- 
mum to  7  cents  a  kilowatt  hour,  where  it  has  since  con- 
tinued. 

No  attempt  is  made  to  give  the  rates  of  the  different 
schedules  in  detail.  They  are  all  published  and  are  on  public 
file  in  the  offices  of  the  Public  Service  Commission  and  the 
offices  of  the  Company.  It  is  significant  and  gratifying  that 
electrical  service  in  New  York  City  is  now  obtainable  to  the 
smallest  consumer  at  approximately  25  per  cent  under  the 
pre-war  price  of  corresponding  service — a  condition  without 
parallel,  the  writer  believes,  in  any  other  industrial  or  com- 
mercial undertaking  of  the  country.  This  percentage  of 
reduction  makes  allowances  for  the  element  of  coal  adjust- 
ment appearing  on  all  bills  during  the  past  year,  owing  to  the 
unprecedented  increase  in  the  cost  of  fuel,  which  made  im- 

141 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

perative  some  added  return  resulting  from  the  extraordinary 
market  conditions  controlling  the  purchase  of  fuel  for  the 
operation  of  the  utility  power  plants.  No  addition  was  made 
for  the  enhanced  cost  of  other  supplies  or  labor,  nor  the 
enormous  increase  in  taxes.  State  and  Federal.  Had  it  not 
been  for  the  extraordinary  coal  situation,  the  Company 
would  have  succeeded  in  going  through  the  entire  war  and 
post-war  period  without  any  upward  swing  of  the  rate,  which 
during  the  pre-war  period,  as  seen,  underwent  several  suc- 
cessive reductions  aggregating  30  per  cent  compared  with  the 
costs  prevailing  before  the  war. 

The  added  cost  of  coal  assumed  was  based  upon  the  aver- 
age cost  of  1916  of  $3.00  a  ton,  tidewater  New  York  harbor; 
and  only  the  excess  above  this  figure,  the  so-called  "out-of- 
pocket"  added  costs  of  coal,  were  superimposed.  The  addi- 
tion itself  was  based  upon  the  economic  principle  of  the  slid- 
ing scale,  rising  and  falling  with  the  cost  of  coal  to  the  Com- 
pany, and  is  now  adding  but  slightly  more  than  one-third  of 
a  cent  a  kilowatt  hour,  at  which  point  the  present  cost  of 
service  is  more  than  25  per  cent  under  the  pre-war  cost  of 
corresponding  service  to  the  small  consumer. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen,  from  a  necessarily  brief  outline,  that 
the  Company's  record  in  reference  to  its  rates,  as  well  as  its 
public  relations  generally,  has  been  one  of  praiseworthy 
growth  and  development.  It  has  aimed  at  all  times  to  reach 
and  fulfill  the  larger  demands  of  the  public  and  its  expecta- 
tion of  fair  treatment.  It  has  endeavored  to  parallel  what 
it  has  so  successfully  accomplished  in  the  technical  and 
scientific  field,  in  the  upbuilding  and  maintenance  of  a  public 
service  unexcelled  in  magnitude  and  comprehensiveness  any- 
where in  the  world. 


142 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Company  Publicity,  Literature  and 
Advertising 

OUOTH  Hamlet:  "The  play's  the  thing  wherein  I'll  catch 
the  conscience  of  the  king."  This  plan  was  shrewd  enough 
in  the  days  of  Shakespeare,  The  Melancholy  Dane,  and  the 
Globe  Theatre  near  the  Thames;  but  the  times  have  changed, 
and  mental  illumination  has  as  many  new  sources  as  has  the 
physical  eye,  once  keyed  to  the  tallow  dip  and  now  to  the 
Edison  lamp.  They  who  would  reach  the  public  in  the  early 
years  of  the  sixteenth  century,  had  beyond  costly  printed 
matter  and  the  bell  of  the  town  crier,  only  the  pulpit  and  the 
stage  from  which  to  deliver  an  important  message.  If  its  in- 
tended recipient  did  not  frequent  church,  or  could  not  read, 
he  might  perhaps  be  found  in  the  play  house,  watching  with 
delight  the  first  comers  of  that  noble  race  of  actors  who  have 
portrayed  life  and  character  on  the  histrionic  boards  through 
these  three  hundred  years.  It  is  literally  a  "far  cry"  from  the 
first  presentation  of  "The  Tempest"  and  "Julius  Caesar" 
to  the  year  when  President  Harding  with  a  phonograph  and 
telephone,  can  address  a  large  proportion  of  the  one  hundred 
million  of  his  fellow  country  men.  It  is,  indeed,  a  "far  cry" 
from  a  hundred  years  ago,  when  the  news  of  Waterloo  was 
twelve  months  reaching  a  remote  English  village,  to  the  noon- 
hour  when  President  Harding  celebrates  the  cutting-in  of 
a  new  radio  station  on  Long  Island  by  sending  from  it  a 
"Message  of  Peace"  to  thirty  of  the  nations  of  the  world. 

Perhaps  Edison,  as  the  father  of  the  Motion  Picture  in- 
dustry, has  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  changed  aspects 
of  the  drama,  but  it  certainly  can  be  alleged  that  he  gave 
with  it  new  meanings  to  the  shrewd  plan  of  the  distraught 
Prince.  Where  the  appeal  of  the  theatre  was  made  before  to 

H3 


PAST  AND  PRESENT— THE  TOWN  CRIER  AND  THE  NEWSBOY 

Drawn  by  P  Frenzeny.  Harper's  Weekly,  1882 


PUBLICITY 

the  relatively  few  audiences  of  the  "legitimate"  it  is  now 
made  several  times  daily  to  uncountable  millions,  chiefly 
with  the  help  again  of  the  incandescent  lighting  system  that 
began  with  his  work  around  1877-82,  and  still  rolls  ever  on, 
gathering  up  new  attributes  and  functions  just  as  a  solid 
new  sphere  is  aggregated  out  of  impalpable  star  dust  for  men 
to  live  on.  And  if  to  the  influence  of  the  motion  picture  art, 
one  of  his  early  creations,  for  mankind,  we  add  what  Edison 
has  done,  since  first  with  his  phonograph  he  imprisoned 
fugitive  sound  for  eternal  reproduction,  a  reasonably  close 
idea  may  be  formed  of  what  one  master  mind  can  do  in 
modifying  and  improving  for  all  his  fellow  beings  their  in- 
timate realizations  of  light,  sound,  form  and  color. 

Out  of  such  a  performance  as  that,  Edison  has  quite  nat- 
urally and  inevitably  derived  a  great  deal  of  publicity  and  ad- 
vertising. His  name  has  been  constantly  in  the  newspapers 
back  to  the  days  when  the  London  Times  told  how  a  little 
"candy  chopper"  out  on  the  Canadian  Grand  Trunk  Railroad 
had  set  up  a  printing  press  in  a  freight  caboose  and  was 
actually  publishing  a  newspaper  from  it!  The  great  engineer 
Stephenson  was  immensely  impressed  by  such  a  stunt,  and 
told  everybody  "at  home"  of  what  he  had  seen.  One  of  the 
latest  to  comment  on  the  universality  of  Edison's  genius  and 
publicity  was  the  Spanish  novelist,  Ibanez,  who  said  of  him 
that  he  was  beyond  doubt  the  best-known  American  of  his 
day  and  generation.  Wherever  Ibanez  went  in  the  world, 
there  Edison  outrivaled  American  oil,  agricultural  imple- 
ments, sewing  machines  and  what  not — with  all  his  mass  of 
real  achievement  and  the  photosphere  of  marvel  that  sur- 
rounded him.  A  life  of  him  was  translated  not  long  since  into 
the  old  Hindoo  language,  Gujerati,  for  the  benefit  of  sundry 
scores  of  millions  of  fervent  oriental  admirers.  And  so  it  goes. 

Now,  such  a  man  might  well  rest  content  with  the  un- 
sought fame  thus  enjoyed,  but  the  significant  fact  remains 
that  Edison  is  one  of  the  largest  individual,  personal  ad- 

H5 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

vertisers  in  the  world.  Printer's  ink  is  the  thing  wherewith  he 
woos  the  market  in  which  he  offers  a  wide  range  of  articles, 
only  one  or  two  of  which  have  anything  to  do  with  any  of 
the  utilities  and  inventions  here  described.  The  man  who 
hammered  the  first  typewriter  into  shape,  and  also  made  the 
first  paraffin  paper  to  wrap  candies  in,  has  ever  some  new 
"joker"  up  his  sleeve,  and  as  with  his  electric  light,  no  sooner 
is  he  sure  that  he  has  it,  than  out  swarm  the  "ads"  about  it. 

The  New  York  Edison  Company  has  taken  from  its  crea- 
tor one  more  "Leaf  of  Life,"  one  more  doctrine  of  practice,  in 
its  really  unique  publicity  and  advertising,  since  the  timid 
directors  forty  years  ago  took  a  little  mishap  and  used  it  as 
a  means  of  talking  to  the  public  about  the  Edison  light,  per- 
fection in  itself  and  minimized  only  in  value  and  reliability 
by  the  sheer  carelessness  of  a  young  employee.  Edison  wanted 
the  world  to  know  about  his  light — and  to  use  it,  and  the 
amount  of  money  that  has  been  spent  since  1882  by  Edison 
lighting  companies  the  world  over  is  such  in  the  aggregate 
as  to  stagger  belief.  The  New  York  Edison  Company  is  today 
more  set  than  ever  in  its  propaganda  as  the  largest  purveyor 
in  the  world  of  electric  light  and  power  service,  and  a  few 
paragraphs  of  this  record  will  skim  over  casual  items  of  its 
present  methods,  which  sum  up  and  continue,  passionately 
and  intensified,  all  the  policies  of  the  past.  "There  is  but  one 
Edison  and  Johnson  is  his  Prophet"  was  the  very  earliest 
slogan,  and  today  Johnson  incarnate  still  shouts  the  New 
York  Edison  message  from  the  rooftrees  of  the  electrical  City 
Magnificent.  His  successor  of  today  in  the  flesh  is  Mr  Ar- 
thur Williams,  its  general  commercial  manager,  from  whose 
fertile  brain  and  wide  experience  have  sprung  many  of  the 
commercial  policies  which  have  contributed  so  notably  to 
the  Company's  success. 

Just  twenty  years  ago,  in  1902,  The  New  York  Edison 
Company,  ever  pioneer  among  utilities,  began  the  publica- 
tion of  a  handsome  Bulletin  devoted  entirely  to  the  story 

146 


PUBLICITY 

of  its  advance  in  securing  customers,  in  placing  itself  "At 
Your  Service"  in  new  and  novel  ways,  and  in  picturing  with 
word  and  pencil  the  various  successive  transitions  of  two 
marvelous  decades  of  civic  expansion.  For  the  purpose  of 
the  present  book,  the  author  has  recently  gone  over  the 
volumes  of  the  long  series  and,  as  an  untiring  student  of  the 
history  of  Manhattan  has  been  impressed  by  the  rich  treasury 
of  data  that  has  insensibly  been  created  by  the  editors  of 
this  Bulletin^  while  merely  aiming  to  interest  and  instruct 
month  by  month  the  New  York  Edison  patrons.  All  the  phys- 
ical changes  in  New  York  are  depicted,  and  all  the  changes 
too  in  the  electrical  arts  that  have  brought,  through  the  New 
York  Edison  service,  so  many  indispensable  comforts  and 
conveniences  into  the  daily  lives  of  several  million  people. 
Oddly,  one  of  the  very  first  long  articles  is  an  interview  with 
Edison  on  electric  automobiles,  by  a  man  named  Romer. 
The  very  latest  Edison  Monthly  Bulletin,  August,  1922,  is 
still  "harping  on  my  daughter,"  with  facsimile  of  a  full- 
page  vehicle  "ad"  and  a  page  article  all  about  it.  And  to 
exemplify  the  infinite  range  and  versatility  of  electricity, 
three  pages  are  devoted  to  a  fascinating  story  that  tells  how 
the  New  York  Edison  current  makes  the  eagle  scream — said 
bird  being  perched  over  the  door  of  the  Garfield  National 
Bank,  whence  it  emits  an  earsplitting  squawk  the  moment  a 
bad  check  is  put  under  the  nose  of  the  cashier.  This"Trouble" 
device  is  set  in  operation  electrically  by  knee  or  foot  pressure 
from  sundry  stations  in  the  bank,  whereupon  an  eight- 
horse-power  motor  sets  going  a  most  raucous  siren,  quite  as 
unmelodious  as  that  with  which  the  Edison  Company  could 
awaken  the  echoes,  during  the  war,  as  warning  against  aero- 
plane attacks.  As  sharp  contrast,  a  domestic  article  of  four 
pages  on  "Blue  Monday"  tells  the  story  of  the  evolution  of 
the  thousands  of  electric  washing  machines  on  the  New  York 
Edison  circuits,  and  shows  the  housewife  what  she  has 
escaped  from,  with  pictures  of  washday  in  1582,  and  how 

H7 


SOME  OF  THE   RECENT  ADVERTISING  MATERIAL 

Including  a  letterhead,  a  label,  place  cards,  a  calendar,  a   blotter,  a  price  card, 
mailing  cards,  a  folder  and  a  booklet 


PUBLICITY 

they  still  do  it  today  far  from  the  Bowery,  in  the  rivers  of 
ancient  India. 

As  a  necessary  counterpart  of  this,  there  is  the  Edison 
Weekly^  large  quarto  whose  sole  object  is  to  promote  esprit 
de  corps  among  the  employees  of  the  Company  just  as  the 
other  is  designed  to  cultivate  friendly  relationships  with 
the  customer.  Perhaps  the  eight  pages  of  this  house  organ, 
are  more  intimately  illuminative  of  the  governing  motives 
and  inner  economy  of  the  great  system  than  anything  else 
that  can  be  studied.  The  Company  is  seen  in  action — orders 
of  the  day,  outlines  of  campaigns,  recognition  of  brilliant  work, 
hints  as  to  new  opportunities,  tales  of  the  vacation,  the  sad 
and  sweet  happenings  of  life,  help  given  by  employees  at  a 
big  fire,  record  of  a  Sprague  motor  still  running  after  thirty- 
two  years'  service,  data  about  the  useful  New  York  Edison 
Bureau  of  Electro-Therapeutics,  lectures  from  the  Bureau  of 
Home  Economics  by  a  woman  employee  before  students  of 
the  Teachers'  College;  items  and  views  of  tennis  tourna- 
ments, bowling  competitions  and  loving  cup,  and  a  descrip- 
tion of  how  a  novel  application  of  electric  heat  is  being  made 
in  a  machine  that  presses  tinfoil  on  cheese  packages,  so 
modulated  as  to  draw  the  butterfats  to  the  surface,  make  the 
tinfoil  adhere,  and  thus  prevent  mold.  An  excellent  article 
describes  and  illustrates  the  new  type  of  signals  for  traffic 
on  Broadway, electrically  lighted  from  the  Edison  system  and 
operated  by  a  policeman.  And  last  but  not  least,  although  the 
"Grand  Old  Man"  hates  to  tear  himself  away  from  that  be- 
loved laboratory  at  the  foot  of  the  Orange  Mountains,  he 
ever  keeps  in  touch,  for  "Mrs  Thomas  A  Edison  was  a  dis- 
tinguished visitor  to  the  Forty-second  Street  showroom  last 
week." 

Quite  in  a  class  by  itself  is  the  Edison  Directory ',  pub- 
lished quarterly  for  the  purpose  of  rendering  the  greatest 
possible  assistance  to  those  desiring  to  use  Edison  service 
for  any  purpose.  It  is  essentially  a  booster  for  business.  It 

149 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


28tK5t- 


*  Genera.!  Offices  • 

Irving  Place  and  Fifteenth  Street 

•  Indicates  Branch.  Offices 


gives  every  manufacturer's  agent,  dealer  or  contractor  an 
equal  chance  with  the  "prospect" — and  then  'The  choice  of 
the  possessor  of  the  'free  dollar'  is  the  determining  factor." 
There  are  thirty-four  closely  printed  double-column  pages 
of  names  and  addresses.  Forty  years  ago  there  was  literally 
but  one  manufacturer  to  deal  with  for  apparatus  to  go  on 
New  York  Edison  circuits.  His  name  was  Edison  and  he  was 
his  own  agent.  This  Directory  gives  sixteen  pages  of  manu- 
facturers and  their  agents — hundreds  of  them.  There  is  also 
a  full  page  of  automobile  charging  stations — some  thirty- 
nine  of  them.  As  one  recalls  the  Johnson-Clarke  wiring  school 
of  1882-3,  it  is  a  curious  contrast  to  note  nearly  four  pages  of 
the  names  of  licensed  wiring  and  installation  contractors  who 
deal  with  the  Company,  intermediaries  in  "hooking  up"  the 
customers  and  their  equipment  with  the  service  that  comes 
to  every  door  like  the  water  supply;  but  after  delivery  there 
ceases  any  similarity  to  a  mere  jet  from  the  faucet,  and  it  can 
be  addressed  to  the  whole  range  of  human  physical  needs. 
Most  startling  of  all,  is  the  twelve  pages  of  lamp  agents,  ar- 
ranged according  to  location  with  reference  to  the  district 
offices  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company,  according  to 
the  territorial  map  here  inserted.  A  page  is  also  given  to  the 
District  Offices  themselves.  Although  not  for  public  use, 
the  Company  has  for  internal  service  a  private  telephone 

i5o 


PUBLICITY 

directory  of  officials,  which  compares  quite  significantly  with 
the  first  book  telephone  directory  of  New  York  City,  issued  in 
August,  1879 — a  modest  manual  of  only  forty-seven  pages 
and  eight  hundred  names. 

Other  specific  literature  of  the  Company  may  be  noted. 
Each  piece,  each  group  of  pamphlets,  refers  to  some  par- 
ticular field  of  service.  That  book  on  "Kitchenette  Cookery" 
is  a  32-page  collection  of  recipes  tried  out  by  domestic  science 
experts  of  the  New  York  Edison  Bureau  of  Home  Economics 
and  all  can  be  produced  with  a  grill,  ovenette,  waffle  iron, 
percolator,  etc,  attached  to  the  lighting  socket.  Of  kindred 
character  is  a  little  brochure  on  "Iceless  Refrigeration," 
dealing  with  the  electric  refrigerator,  a  device  soon  to  be  as 
well  known  for  cooling  food  as  the  fan  motor  is  for  cooling 
humans.  Still  another  deals  with  the  simple  technique  of  the 
electric  washing  machine.  A  32-page  pamphlet  sums  up  the 
cost  and  virtues  of  twenty-eight  classes  of  domestic  electric 
appliances;  and  still  another  discusses  the  "Wrong  and  Right 
Way  to  Use"  these  home  adjuncts.  The  baby  comes  in  for  a 
whole  series  of  its  own;  and  a  big  colored  broadsheet  il- 
lustrates twenty-eight  ways  in  which  Mistress  Manhattan 
can  use  her  little  "electric  servants"  from  7  am  to  7  pm. 
Needless  to  say,  electric  signs  have  a  group  of  effective  book- 
lets of  most  alluring  appeal.  One  of  these  illustrates  its  argu- 
ments with  the  types  of  signs  that  have  made  the  "Great 
White  Way,"  better  known  than  any  other  nickname  of  a 
great  thoroughfare,  and  that  "indelibly  impress  their  mes- 
sages every  night  on  the  minds  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
people."  Supplementary  to  this  is  a  thoughtful  little  pocket 
piece  "Planning  for  Directional  Electric  Signs,"  solely  in- 
tended for  busy  architects,  and  "listing  those  places  where 
interior  electric  signs  have  repeatedly  found  their  truest 
expression."  Going  beyond  this,  in  practical  aim,  is  a  pam- 
phlet which  ought  to  be  in  every  home,  office  and  factory, 
"The  Economics  of  Good  Lighting,"  with  its  discussion  of 


".AX     "YOXTlLx    3JBJUVICB" 

THE  N  m  YOKBL  EDKON  COMMNY 

GENERAL    OFFICER,  55    DVANE 


117  We^t  125tH 


THE  FIRST  USE  OF  THE  EDISON  MAN  IN  ADVERTISING- 
USED  AS  A  BLOTTER 


EDISON 

Monthly 


I  ED/SON 

D/ RECTORY 


THE  COVER  DESIGN'S  OF  TWO  EDISON  PERIODICALS 


PUBLICITY 

accidents  from  poor  illumination,  data  on  production  and 
morale  as  affected  by  bad  or  good  illuminating  engineer- 
ing, and  then  presenting  a  series  of  recommended  standards 
of  illumination  for  rooms,  mills,  factories  of  all  kinds,  halls, 
churches,  schools,  elevators,  stores.  All  of  this  for  well  people, 
and  the  places  where  they  congregate.  For  those  who  can  be 
benefitted  by  the  modern  scientific  application  of  electricity 
to  curative  purpose,  there  is  The  New  York  Edison  Bureau 
of  Electro-Therapeutics  with  its  literature  and  demonstra- 
tions bearing  on  the  use  of  such  "ministering  angels"  as 
electro-blankets,  pads,  vibrators,  violet-ray  machines,  instru- 
ment sterilizers,  bedside  lamps,  bottle  warmers.  All  these 
and  sundry  other  devices  bring  back  again  in  perfected  form 
the  appliances  that  were  the  philosophical  toys  and  fancies 
of  the  good  old  days  of  static  electricity — of  Franklin,  Nollet, 
Hauksbee — and  now  with  Edison  current  to  activate  them, 
alleviate  suffering  or  abolish  pain. 

In  1905,  a  distinctive  and  altogether  delightful  personality 
was  introduced  to  the  group  of  fictitious  characters  that  have 
become  identified  with  "old  New  York."  It  is  the  world- 
famous  "Edison  Man"  of  Mr  F  G  Cooper,  whose  artistry 
has  since  overflowed  into  other  fields  but  first  became  known 
when  as  a  shy,  modest,  struggling  youth  he  submitted  his 
sketches  of  Father  Knickerbocker  "At  Your  Service."  He  re- 
ceived instant  encouragement  and  support  from  the  officials 
of  the  Company  when  they  enthusiastically  welcomed  that 
charming  embodiment  of  the  courtly  airs  and  debonaire 
graces  of  an  earlier  Knickerbocker  day,  so  suggestive  of 
amiable  politeness  and  kindly  intent,  so  pervaded  with  an 
atmosphere  of  good  will  and  enjoyment  of  life  in  seeing  other 
people  happy.  Cooper's  fertile  genius  never  showed  to  better 
advantage  than  when  he  thus  put  the  "Edison  Man"  into  a 
portrait  gallery  of  immortals  of  the  imagination,  alongside 
John  Bull,  Columbia,  Uncle  Sam,  Phoebe  Snow,  and  even 
the  Gold  Dust  Twins  and  Aunt  Jemima.  It  suffices  to  mention 

153 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

thus  only  one  or  two  other  rather  shadowy  trade  characters 
to  appreciate  how  finely  Cooper  has  created  a  real  human 
being  of  "sweetness  and  light" — and  then  note  how,  adopt- 
ing that  creation,  The  New  York  Edison  has  not  only  worked 
up  the  ideal  through  these  seventeen  years,  but  perhaps  even 
insensibly  influenced  by  it,  has  taken  it  as  the  great  exemplar. 
A  man  is  known  by  the  company  he  keeps.  Conversely,  a 
company  is  known  by  the  men  it  keeps, — and  that  cour- 
teous, lovable  "Edison  Man"  serves  to  represent  ten  thou- 
sand others  whose  ambition  is  to  be  equally  suave  and  bland 
in  deportment,  always  courteously,  "At  Your  Service." 

The  Edison  Man  has  grown  visibly  since  he  was  first  made 
use  of  in  New  York  Edison  publicity  in  1905, — and  he  would 
not  be  a  real  New  Yorker  if  he  had  not  annexed  a  charming 
feminine  companion  in  the  "Edison  Girl."  Moreover,  the 
flexibility  of  the  character  has  been  dwelt  upon  by  a  leading 
"ad"  expert,  who  is  struck  also  with  his  ubiquity.  One  sees 
him  everywhere  in  every  method  of  expression — calendars, 
posters,  broadsides,  stained  glass  windows,  blotters,  price 
tags,  cigar  wrappers,  memoranda  blanks,  daily  newspaper 
advertising,  return  postal  card  stamps,  booklets,  match 
boxes,  cut-out  puzzles  for  the  children— and  in  all  of  them, 
like  the  character  in  "The  Mascot,"  he  "bobs  up  serenely," 
and  always  comes  up  smiling,  whatever  the  task  or  the  mes- 
sage entrusted  to  his  ingratiating  delivery.  He  "gets  there"- 
but  that  was  ever  a  New  York  quality;  and  the  milder  at- 
tributes of  a  more  leisurely  and  polished  age  are  also  born 
again  in  this  personification  of  a  public  utility  whose  com- 
mercial success  has  been  developed  by  its  supreme  adminis- 
tration of  the  physical  resources  of  civilization  in  their  latest 
reach — steadily  improved  and  enhanced  so  that  "what  it 
does  still  betters  what  is  done"  and  crowns  each  earlier 
achievement  in  the  present  deeds. 


I54 


CHAPTER  XIV 

The  Company  Officials  and  Employees 
-Relations  with  the  Industry— Co- 
operation during  the  Great  War 

TELLING  in  the  humorous  way  he  has  of  treating  diffi- 
culties lightly,  Mr  Edison  describes  a  visit  paid  to  his 
superintendent  of  Pearl  Street,  Mr  Charles  E  Chinnock, 
selected  by  him  at  an  anxious  moment  to  run  the  Pearl  Street 
Station.  Inquiring  as  to  the  competency  of  the  previous 
incumbent,  the  visitor  said  to  Chinnock,  "Did  Mr  Blank 
have  charge  of  this  station?"  "Yes,  sir."  "Did  he  know  any- 
thing about  running  a  station?"  Chinnock  ejaculated  with 
emphatic  fervor:  "Does  he  know  anything  about  running  a 
station  like  this?  No,  siree!  He  doesn't  even  suspect  any- 
thing!" 

The  preceding  pages  will,  it  is  hoped,  have  given  a  fairly 
good  idea  of  the  qualities  needed  to  manage  and  operate  an 
enterprise  such  as  the  great  public  utility  known  as  The  New 
York  Edison  Company.  Even  in  the  days  when  Chinnock  rose 
nobly  to  the  occasion,  and,  while  conducting  the  plant  with 
interior  efficiency,  also  put  it  on  a  sound  financial  basis,  the 
demand  was  evident  for  ability  of  a  very  superior  order.  A 
glimpse  at  the  psychology  of  the  earlier  management  is  given 
in  the  little  discussion  in  the  rate  Chapter.  In  those  early 
days,  central  station  managers  were  created  by  the  display  of 
their  native  talent.  They  were  invited  to  "Come  up  from  the 
kitchen!"  whether  it  be  a  boiler  room,  a  stenographer's  desk, 
a  banking  office,  a  factory  floor,  an  oil  camp,  a  gas  works, 
a  dry  goods  store.  As  ever,  in  the  advance  of  industry  and  in- 
vention, a  new  opportunity  had  been  presented  for  the  dif- 
ferentiation of  ability  and  function. 

Very  soon  the  expansion  of  the  central  station  field  and 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

the  enormous  growth  of  the  industry  led  to  a  further  dif- 
ferentation  within  itself,  and  the  creation  of  organized  forces 
into  departments  and  bureaus,  under  heads  of  distinctive  skill 
in  the  work  to  which  they  were  assigned.  The  New  York 
Edison  Company  may  be  taken  as  a  good  example  of  all  this 
natural  evolution  historically,  and  in  the  constitution  of  its 
official  personnel.  The  writer  begs  to  be  acquitted  of  any 
neglect  if  he  does  not  here  enter,  as  he  would  most  cheerfully, 
upon  a  little  "Who's  Who"  in  the  Company,  for  after  a  life- 
time of  acquaintance  with  them  all  and  having  as  a  journalist 
devoted  many  of  his  pages  to  their  work,  he  could  probably 
dispose  of  all  of  them  in  a  "survey"  without  treading  on  toes 
or  bringing  the  blush  to  a  hardened  cheek.  Since  that  is  taboo, 
the  liberty  will  be  taken  of  pointing  to  the  Company  as  once  a 
great  commonwealth  was  apostrophized,  and  saying:  "See, 
there  she  stands!  Do  you  think  such  a  great  representative 
organism  could  have  been  created  and  maintained  without 
a  large  measure  of  genius,  ability,  knowledge,  experience,  zeal 
and  devotion  on  the  part  of  each  man  concerned  these  forty 
years  and  today?" 

To  one  man,  especially,  since  he  is  not  here  to  object,  it  is 
desired  at  this  point  to  pay  a  personal  tribute — the  late 
Mr  Anthony  N  Brady,  for  many  years  president  of  the  Com- 
pany. As  editor  of  a  leading  electrical  journal,  the  oppor- 
tunity came  frequently  to  the  writer  to  meet  him,  and  invol- 
untarily to  measure  him  up  with  other  great  public  utility 
leaders  or  as  a  power  in  the  field  of  electrical  manufacturing. 
Shrewd,  forceful,  direct,  the  qualities  that  stood  out  were  his 
soundness  of  judgment  in  large  affairs,  his  swiftness  of  de- 
cision rarely  wrong,  his  intimate  knowledge  of  construction 
problems,  his  aversion  to  the  limelight — and  above  all  his 
desire  to  be  fair  and  just.  Even  if  given  quickly,  his  word  was 
his  bond.  He  appreciated  loyal  service  and  rewarded  hand- 
somely. His  stamp  on  American  public  utilities  was  deep  and 
lasting  and  his  aim  was  high. 


OFFICIALS  AND  EMPLOYEES 

Something  has  already  been  said  in  various  chapters  of  the 
different  departments,  and  of  the  duties  of  the  rank  and  file 
involved  in  their  proper  functioning.  An  aggregation  of  some 
9000  picked  men,  under  able  command,  is  concerned;  and  the 
general  conditions  in  the  field  of  employment  and  in  the  re- 
lations so  crudely  summed  up  in  the  expression  "Capital  and 
Labor,"  have  their  sociological  effect  here  quite  as  fully  as 
anywhere  else  in  these  United  States.  It  need  not  be  em- 
phasized again  that  the  foundations  of  the  Company  were 
laid  by  co-workers  striving  emulously  with  the  Great  Master, 
in  as  true  a  spirit  of  comradeship  as  that  which  inspired 
Governor  Carver  and  his  little  band  of  Pilgrims  at  Ply- 
mouth. From  that  Pearl  Street  epoch  to  the  present,  it  has 
been  sought  to  maintain  the  personal  intimacy  and  keep  an 
"open  door"  policy  alive  between  executives  and  workers. 
As  was  said  ten  years  ago,  when  the  Company  celebrated  its 
third  decade:  "It  is,  however,  manifestly  difficult,  if  not  im- 
possible to  maintain  the  same  intimate,  informal  relations  in 
a  large  body  as  in  a  small  one.  But  through  all  the  enormous 
development  of  the  last  fifteen  years,  a  spirit  of  genuine 
interest  has  existed  between  the  executives  and  all  members 
of  the  Company.  This  is  perhaps  due  to  the  fact  that  many 
of  its  officials  have  won  their  way  to  their  present  positions 
from  the  ranks." 

They  are  still  rising  from  the  ranks,  and  to  no  work  does  the 
management  give  more  attention  than  that  of  keeping  the  up- 
ward path  clear  for  aspiring  talent.  A  year-book  for  1921-22 
devotes  no  fewer  than  fifty-four  pages  to  the  "Educational 
Courses  and  Employee  Relations"  of  the  Company.  In  1911, 
a  school,  quite  like  that  little  red  school  house  of  electricity 
set  up  by  Johnson,  was  established  to  provide  other  than 
technical  training,  attendance  was  compulsory,  and  the  em- 
ployees were  allowed  time  for  it  during  business  hours.  It 
aimed  to  be  not  only  a  "school  of  salesmanship"  but  a  "school 
of  acquaintance"  with  duties  and  department  interrelation- 

T57 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

ships,  and,  if  it  may  be  so  phrased,  a  "school  of  knowledge  of 
oneself,"  anticipating  much  of  the  popular  educational  effort 
of  the  present  hour,  with  a  rational  attempt  to  spot  defects 
rather  than  a  morbid  analysis  of  feelings.  Today,  The  New 
York  Edison  Company,  which  has  done  much  to  help  cor- 
porate advance  generally  in  this  line,  maintains  three  schools 
through  the  Association  of  Employees  of  the  Company.  The 
Technical  School,  now  fifteen  years  old,  dating  back  in  reality 
to  1906,  provides  in  courses  of  several  grades,  electrical  in- 
struction all  the  way  from  platform  experiments  to  advanced 
laboratory  work  by  the  students  themselves.  The  courses  may 
not  go  as  far  or  as  deep,  but  they  compare  favorably  with 
anything  done  in  the  colleges.  The  Commercial  School,  started 
in  1911,  has  broadened  out  into  instruction  not  only  in  sales- 
manship, but  in  utility  service  to  the  public,  and  the  history 
and  development  of  electricity  and  the  arts.  Junior  clerks 
and  office  boys  see  vistas  of  the  higher  walks  in  life,  and  learn 
that  as  citizens  of  no  mean  city  they  have  a  special  chance  to 
make  good  in  a  corporation  that,  for  example,  receives  some 
30,000  telephone  calls  a  day  for  prompt,  accurate  and  cour- 
teous attention  not  only  as  they  come  in — but  in  after  dis- 
posal. The  women  of  the  Company  find  in  the  Commercial 
School  two  courses  in  Domestic  Science,  one  in  cooking  and 
the  other  in  sewing.  The  third  of  the  educational  efforts  is 
covered  by  the  Accounting  School.  As  long  ago  as  1912-13, 
the  first  course  in  the  Theory  of  Accounting  was  presented 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Association  of  Employees,  by  an 
instructor  from  the  School  of  Commerce,  Accounts  and 
Finance  of  New  York  University.  A  supplementary  course  of 
ten  lectures  was  given  by  Company  officials.  This  work  was 
helpful,  it  grew  naturally  and  rapidly,  so  that  today  there 
is  a  three-year  course  which  ranges  over  the  whole  domain  of 
accounting,  finance  and  business  economics,  from  double 
entry  bookkeeping  to  the  organization  of  the  holding  com- 
pany. 

158 


OFFICIALS  AND  EMPLOYEES 

So  much  for  education.  In  other  Company  relations,  the 
subject  of  industrial  injuries  looms  large.  The  Company  did 
not  wait  for  the  coming  of  the  New  York  State  compensation 
law  of  1914,  equitable,  fair  and  far-reaching,  but  had  already 
prior  to  that  taken  upon  itself  the  entire  burden  of  industrial 
injury  and  loss.  Injured  employees  are  paid  full  wages  during 
the  entire  time  of  disability,  besides  being  furnished  with  the 
best  medical  attention.  This  humanitarian  practice  permits 
of  no  misunderstanding  on  either  side.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
while  under  the  Workmen's  Compensation  Act,  electric 
lighting  is  classed  as  a  hazardous  occupation,  only  a  very 
small  percentage  of  New  York  Edison  accidents  are  purely 
electrical — ranging  from  8  to  10  per  cent.  Last  year  the  vast 
majority  of  the  casualties  might  have  occurred  in  any  em- 
ployment. No  refinement  of  precaution  is  unknown  to  the 
various  plants  for  protection,  prevention  or  rehabilitation. 

For  all  who  have  borne  the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day  of 
faithful  service,  the  Company  has  in  operation  a  Service 
Annuity  Plan  under  which  any  employee  may  receive  such 
service  annuity  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  Board  of 
Directors  if  he  is  at  least  fifty  years  of  age  and  has  rendered 
satisfactory  service  continuously  for  twenty-five  years.  The 
annuity  is  at  the  rate  of  2  per  cent  for  each  year  of  service 
with  the  Company,  on  the  average  wage  for  the  last  preced- 
ing five  years.  The  maximum  annuity,  however,  may  not 
exceed  60  per  cent  of  the  average  wage  for  the  last  five  years. 

The  Association  of  Employees  of  The  New  York  Edison 
Company  has  already  been  referred  to  in  various  connections. 
It  was  organized  in  the  autumn  of  1905,  with  social,  educa- 
tional and  beneficial  objects,  and  with  three  classes  of  mem- 
bership— active,  insurance  and  honorary.  Active  members 
are  voters,  who  can  hold  office.  Insurance  members  are 
former  employees  who  still  retain  the  insurance  privileges. 
Members  employed  on  an  hourly  basis  are  entitled  to  the 
additional  benefit  of  the  Sick  Benefit  Fund,  established 

T59 


I 


OFFICIALS  AND  EMPLOYEES 

November  15,  1915.  The  annual  dues  of  active  and  insur- 
ance members  are  $2.60,  all  of  which  is  reserved  for  applica- 
tion to  the  Insurance  Fund.  The  dues  provide  each  person 
with  membership  in  the  Association  and  $250  of  life  in- 
surance without  medical  examination.  Additional  insurance 
to  the  amount  of  $1000  may  also  be  obtained  without  such 
examination,  and  to  an  unlimited  amount  with  proper  ex- 
amination and  proof  of  insurability,  under  favorable  rates 
and  covering  the  usual  "Whole  Life,"  "Twenty  Payment 
Life"  and  "Endowment"  policies.  The  Company  contrib- 
utes an  additional  |ioo  to  the  beneficiary  of  a  deceased 
member  who  at  the  time  of  death  is  in  its  service.  The  Sick 
Benefit  Fund  enables  any  paid-by-the-hour  member  to  re- 
ceive, on  payment  of  a  small  weekly  sum,  about  80  per  cent 
of  his  weekly  wage  while  ill,  for  a  period  not  in  excess  of 
twenty-six  weeks  in  any  year.  Sick  benefit  dues  are  at  the  rate 
of  2  cents  for  each  $1.44  benefit  received,  one-half  of  which 
dues  are  paid  by  the  member  and  one-half  by  the  Company. 
In  January,  1906,  there  were  50  members  and  in  January, 
1921,  the  number  had  reached  5818.  The  Association  in  con- 
nection with  its  educational  work  maintains  a  fully  equipped 
laboratory.  It  has  a  Club  House  with  library  extensively 
used,  promotes  social  activities  such  as  an  annual  outing, 
amateur  theatricals,  smokers,  lectures  and  a  ladies'  night,  to 
which  may  be  added  the  closely  contested  interdepartmental 
bowling  matches  and  tennis  tournaments.  Auxiliary  to  such 
work  is  the  Boy  Scout  Troop,  organized  in  1914,  strong  for  all 
the  ideals  of  that  fine  organization,  for  which  Camp  Gawtry, 
named  in  honor  of  Mr  Lewis  B  Gawtry,  formerly  secretary 
of  the  Company,  is  maintained  on  Lake  Stahahe,  in  the  Inter- 
state Park  on  the  Hudson  River. 

Beyond  all  this  there  is  a  close  affiliation  with  the  industry 
as  a  whole,  through  the  National  Electric  Light  Association, 
and  The  New  York  Companies  Section  of  that  influential  and 
representative  body.  The  section  comprises  five  operating 

161 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

electrical  utility  companies  within  the  limits  of  Greater  New 
York,  and  The  New  York  Edison  Company  supplies  about 
three-fourths  of  the  membership.  This  organization  is 
financed  partly  by  the  employees  of  the  companies,,  as  per- 
sonal Class  B  members  of  the  National  body  and  partly  by 
the  companies  as  corporate  Class  A  members.  When  a  mem- 
ber is  also  in  membership  in  The  New  York  Edison  Em- 
ployees Association,  the  Company  pays  one-half  of  his  $3.00 
yearly  dues. 

It  may  be  fitly  noted  at  this  point  that  both  in  the  Associa- 
tion of  Edison  Illuminating  Companies  and  the  National 
Electric  Light  Association,  as  well  as  in  such  bodies  as  the 
American  Institute  of  Electrical  Engineers,  The  American 
Society  of  Mechanical  Engineers,  The  American  Society  of 
Civil  Engineers,  The  Illuminating  Engineering  Society,  The 
New  York  Electrical  Society,  and  other  national  or  local 
technical  bodies  the  officers  and  employees  of  The  New  York 
Edison  Company  are  numerously  represented,  frequently 
filling  the  presidency  or  other  high  positions  of  services,  are 
represented  on  many  of  the  Committees,  and  are  at  all  times 
living  up  to  the  slogan  "At  Your  Service"  and  evidencing 
active  belief  in  Bacon's  dictum  that  a  man  owes  such  service 
to  his  profession,  while  receiving  in  return  benefit  from  all 
these  professional  ties  and  relationships. 

Both  in  their  civic  and  in  their  national  relations,  the 
officers  and  employees  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company 
have,  it  may  be  noted  in  their  behalf,  measured  up  to  the 
requirements  of  good  citizenship,  individually  or  standing 
back  of  the  corporation  in  its  pledges  and  undertakings.  A 
large  share  can  readily  be  played  in  local  events  such  as  the 
home  coming  of  Admiral  Dewey  or  the  Hudson-Fulton  Cele- 
bration, because  electric  light  and  power  are  indispensable 
and  are  made  available  for  spectacular  and  commemorative 
purposes  on  a  scale  never  before  attempted.  An  electrically 
illuminated  city  appears  to  be  en  fete  even  on  the  most 

162 


OFFICIALS  AND  EMPLOYEES 

prosaic  occasions,  and  perhaps  the  old  town  is  never  more 
beautiful  than  when  the  veil  of  fog  and  mist  falls  upon  its 
vague  radiant  towers  as  the  day  closes,  or  when  its  wet  and 
shining  pavements  reflect  in  gentle  glow  the  lower  constella- 
tions— golden  rows  of  matter-of-fact  street  lights.  But  when 
New  York  really  makes  deliberately  ready  to  "light  up," 
The  New  York  Edison  Company  is  all  there  as  official  torch 
bearer  at  large  for  the  whole  community.  Such  glorified  il- 
lumination comes  readily  to  mind  not  only  in  connection 
with  the  Spanish-American  War  but  more  vividly  and  re- 
cently in  celebrations  of  the  Great  War  and  the  return  to 
God's  Country  of  the  boys  who  went  overseas  to  "make  the 
W7orld  safe  for  Democracy." 

It  is  with  a  brief  account  of  what  The  New  York  Edison 
Company  did  in  the  Great  War  that  the  chronicler  would 
close  his  story  of  forty  years  "At  Your  Service"  because  then 
the  sentiment  expanded  beyond  local  horizons  and  expressed 
the  loftiest  patriotism.  In  fact,  its  interpretation  in  terms  of 
loyalty  and  preparedness  came  long  before  the  call  to  arms. 
It  was  not  until  1916  that  the  National  Defence  Council  was 
formed  to  meet  the  military,  industrial  and  commercial  needs 
of  the  hour,  when  the  protective  forces  of  the  lighting  com- 
panies of  New  York  City  had  already  been  functioning 
efficiently  for  more  than  two  years!  They  had  called  into 
existence  of  their  own  initiative  a  special  uniformed  police  of 
600  men  to  protect  plants  and  distribution  systems,  and  this 
was  but  the  nucleus  of  a  larger  force.  Valuable  and  vulnerable 
property  on  which  the  great  population  depends  for  light, 
heat  and  power,  three  main  props  of  human  existence, 
escaped  damage  without  scar,  even  after  the  country  had 
entered  into  active  war.  This  special  force  co-operated  fully 
with  the  Army,  the  Navy  and  the  Police.  Other  work  fell  to 
the  regular  lighting  staff  of  the  Company  in  protective  light- 
ing, special,  portable  temporary  lighting  and  spectacular 
lighting.  In  this  was  included  particularly  the  safe-guarding 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

of  bridges  and  river  tubes,  as  well,  incidentally,  as  frustrating 
any  attempt  to  pocket  by  blowing  up  the  nearest  bridges,  the 
Brooklyn  Navy  Yard  in  its  entirety.  "Flood  lighting"  took 
on  a  new  significance.  Most  vital  of  all  was  such  service  in  pro- 
tecting the  water  supply  of  the  City,  which  for  Manhattan  and 
Bronx  Boroughs  reaches  the  enormous  quantity  of  nearly 
500,000,000  gallons  daily.  It  was  of  sinister  import  that  in  the 
winter  of  1917-18  over  one  hundred  fires  daily  in  New  York 
City  seemed  on  investigation  to  be  of  incendiary  origin.  The 
one  real  insurance  against  the  mighty  conflagration  sought  as 
an  infallible  means  of  destroying  the  whole  city  and  putting 
all  its  vast  agencies  out  of  commission,  was  the  maintenance 
of  the  daily  flow  southward  of  a  half-a-billion  gallons  through 
the  northern  aqueducts — Croton  and  Catskill.  Up  among 
the  mountains  where  Rip  Van  Winkle  went  to  sleep  and  gal- 
loping Ichabod  Crane  beat  the  Hessian  by  a  length,  twelve 
hundred  guardsmen,  with  the  aid  of  electric  lights  fed  from 
New  York  Edison  circuits  through  its  allied  companies 
operating  in  the  localities,  watched  vigilantly  for  eighteen 
months  against  the  attack  of  later  Hessians  on  hundreds  of 
miles  of  pipe. 

One  would  gladly  dwell  on  all  these  thrilling  episodes, 'but 
there  was  much  tedious,  humdrum  work,  equally  vital,  such 
as  that  pertaining  to  governmental  administrative  functions. 
One  officer  of  the  Company  as  a  dollar-a-year  man  became 
the  Federal  Food  Administrator  for  Greater  New  York.  An- 
other was  Chairman  of  the  National  Committee  on  Gas  and 
Electric  Service — at  one  time  advisory  to  the  Council  of 
National  Defence  and  handling  fuel  for  the  utilities,  electri- 
fying camps  and  cantonments,  rationing  energy  to  war  in- 
dustries, making  tests  of  all  kinds,  supplying  men  at  critical 
points  and  rendering  expert  services  to  government  depart- 
ments. The  Company's  President  was  a  Special  Red  Cross 
Commissioner  in  Europe.  Another  officer  planned  the  power 
plant  of  the  immense  installation  at  Nitro,  W  Va,  for  the  pro- 


OFFICIALS  AND  EMPLOYEES 

duction  of  smokeless  powder  at  a  cost  of  $80,000,000,  some 
20,000  employees  turning  out  325  tons  a  day,  being  housed 
in  a  mushroom  town  of  over  5000  buildings  with  streets, 
sewers,  water  and  gas  mains,  electric  light  and  power,  etc. 
One  stunt  was  the  thawing  out  electrically  in  the  Harlem 
River  of  a  U  S  torpedo  boat  that  was  frozen  stiff  in  the  ways. 
Various  members  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company's  En- 
gineering and  Test  Departments  were  assigned  for  several 
months,  in  1917,  to  the  solution  of  pressing  war  problems 
under  the  direction  at  his  Orange  Laboratories  of  Mr  Edison, 
as  Honorary  Chairman  of  the  Naval  Consulting  Board. 

Within  the  Company,  all  was  war  activity  through  the 
period  of  stress  and  strain  from  April,  1917,  until  the  end 
came  with  the  Armistice  in  November,  1918.  First  of  all  may 
be  mentioned  the  hearty  participation  by  the  Company  and 
all  its  employees  in  subscribing  to  and  helping  to  raise  the 
five  Liberty  Loans  of  nearly  $19,000,000,000  and  in  disposing 
of  the  War  Savings  Securities  that  brought  the  new  war  debt 
up  to  nearly  twenty  billions.  What  was  done  in  the  food  and 
fuel  saving  campaigns  was  of  equal  magnitude  and  im- 
portance. The  New  York  Edison  Company  co-operated 
actively  in  the  work  of  the  Government,  in  educating  into  self- 
denial  a  great  well-fed  population  of  6,000,000  of  whom 
roughly  one-third  were  foreign  born,  coming  from  fifty 
foreign  countries,  mostly  without  any  knowledge  of  English, 
and  to  be  reached  in  some  1,200,000  families  occupying  365,- 
ooo  homes.  The  actual  enforcement  of  regulation  and  willing 
acquiescence  secured  amongst  a  people  of  such  heterogeneity 
was  a  monumental  achievement.  The  mere  fact  that  584,054 
New  York  women  by  pledge  cards  circulated  through  New 
York  Edison  vehicles,  employees  and  agencies,  became  mem- 
bers of  the  Federal  Food  Board  is  noble  testimony  secured 
forever  as  to  the  oftchallenged  patriotism  of  this  little  island 
on  the  silver  Sound.  But  there  was  also  participation  in  the 
organization  of  volunteer  Engineer  Regiments,  the  Red  Cross 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

activities,  and  other  philanthropies  aided — such  as  Salvation 
Army,  Knights  of  Columbus,  Young  Men's  and  Women's 
Christian  Associations  and  benevolent  work  done  for  the 
families  of  those  who  went  on  naval  and  military  service. 
The  simple,  pathetic  records  show  that  from  the  New  York 
Electric  Lighting  Companies  there  enlisted  or  were  drafted 
no  fewer  than  1551  men  of  whom  43  made  the  supreme 
sacrifice,  dying  in  the  cause  and  uniform  of  their  country. 
Many  were  wounded,  suffered  loss  of  limb  or  health,  or  were 
gassed.  Several  were  decorated  for  gallantry.  "At  Your 
Service"  had  found  its  noblest  expression. 


166 


CHAPTER  XV 

The  Next  Decade  "At  Your  Service" 
and  Thereafter 

THE  population  of  New  York  City  is  growing  at  the 
rate  of  50,000  new  inhabitants  a  month.  Every  year 
the  city  is  adding  the  equivalent  of  five  Albanys  to  the  num- 
ber of  those  who  live  within  its  ever-expanding  borders. 

There  lies  one  of  the  problems  of  The  New  York  Edison 
Company  in  the  next  ten  years,  for  there  should  be,  even  at 
that  rate  of  increase,  12,000,000  to  be  supplied  in  1932  with 
electric  light,  heat  and  power,  and  all  the  other  new  services 
that  electricity  takes  over  or  creates. 

Among  the  other  problems  that  confront  the  Company  are 
those  of  its  future  engineering.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  the  rate  of  progress  in  the  mechanical  and  electrical  arts 
will  be  any  less  now  and  hereafter  than  when  the  group  of 
inventions  to  which  the  name  of  Edison  is  attached  broke 
upon  a  dazzled  world.  Edison  himself  would  be  the  last  to 
accept  any  such  conception  of  human  destiny.  Is  not  the  one 
time  obscure  "Edison  Effect" — a  mere  black  shadow  cast  on 
the  enclosing  globe  by  the  carbon  filament  in  his  very  first 
lamps,  forty  years  ago, — the  profusely  pregnant  breeder  at 
this  very  moment  of  a  whole  new  development  that  ranges 
from  effective  radio  transmission  to  the  production  of  a 
novel  series  of  heavy  power  apparatus,  and  to  the  latest 
researches  into  the  constitution  of  matter? 

That  is  one  end  of  the  scale  of  possibilities.  At  the  other  is 
the  statement  of  a  leader  in  the  field  of  animal  light  genera- 
tion that  with  a  color  distribution  rather  worse  than  that  of 
the  mercury  arc,  the  firefly  does  produce  a  light  of  sufficient 
intensity  for  human  use,  of  a  quality  that  makes  it  advan- 
tageous for  many  kinds  of  work.  "Its  efficiency  is  undoubtedly 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

exceedingly  high,  since  study  of  both  its  total  and  its  radi- 
ant and  luminous  efficiency  indicate  figures  of  80  per  cent  or 
better."  Daily  hints  from  Nature  are  prodigally  at  the  dis- 
posal of  those  who  come  after.  Thanks  to  the  work  of  such 
men  as  Edison,  each  later  age  has  greater  resources  placed  at 
its  disposal.  It  was  not  until  this  age  that  radium  itself,  ex- 
isting through  all  the  presence  of  man  on  earth,  reached 
recognition  and  use.  Evolution  does  not  work  backward  in 
invention  or  science. 

As  for  the  burden  that  all  this  higher  environment  is  al- 
leged to  have  placed  on  the  shoulders  of  civilization,  man  be- 
coming the  victim  of  his  own  inventions,  the  assertion  is 
simply  made  here  that  the  proposition  is  not  true.  The  iron 
law  of  natural  inequality  may  still  run  counter  to  philo- 
sophical theory  and  political  aims,  but  invention  does  benefit 
everybody,  removes  the  grounds  of  revolt,  brings  culture, 
happiness  and  comfort  to  ever  larger  numbers  of  people  in 
larger  degree,  and  will  go  on,  as  we  throw  off  the  relics  of 
chaos,  barbarism,  ignorance  and  physical  suffering. 

To  this  Edison  has,  if  there  is  any  truth  in  the  present 
modest  record,  contributed  largely,  vitally,  nobly.  Through 
The  New  York  Edison  Company  every  dweller  on  Manhattan 
is  his  residuary  legatee.  Through  the  universal  acceptance  of 
such  boons  as  the  Edison  lamp,  his  system  of  electrical  dis- 
tribution, and  his  numerous  epoch-making  inventions,  the 
world  becomes  fitter  to  live  in,  and  mankind  better  able  to 
live  in  it. 


168 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Statistical  Data 

Average  Life  of  Lamps  during  Early 
Years  of  Edison  Service 


1884 

1885 

1886 

January        . 

.     400  hours 

1084  hours 

1227  hours 

February      .      .      .      . 

.     523  hours 

1075  nours 

1091  hours 

March    

349  hours 

1032  hours 

996  hours 

April 

448  hours 

1047  hours 

998  hours 

May 

400  hours 

838  hours 

1  244  hours 

June        

.     389  hours 

939  hours 

1423  hours 

July.      . 

.     502  hours 

1009  h°urs 

1505  hours 

August   

.     553  hours 

924  hours 

1235  hours 

September    . 

.     727  hours 

948  hours 

1504  hours 

October  

730  hours 

884  hours 

1478  hours 

November    . 

914  hours 

1029  hours 

1623  hours 

December    . 

.     832  hours 

1347  hours 

1462  hours 

From  the  Annual  Report  of  the  Edison  Electric  Illuminating 
Company  for  1886 


Week  ending 
August  24,  1882 

30  years  after 
August  24,  1912 

10  years  after 
July  i,  1922  . 


The  Company  Payroll 


Number  of 
Employees 

78 


5732 
8427 


Total 
Annual  Payroll 

171,000.  80 
15,167,847.88 


169 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

Growth  in  Customers  and  Equivalents 
Manhattan  and  Bronx 


Year 

Number  of 
Customers 

Number  of 

Meters 

50  Watt 
Equiva- 
lents 

December  31,  1892  

4,344 

196,932 

December  31,  1893  

5^54 

273,36i 

December  31,  1894  

5^77 

340,784 

December  31,  1895  

6,675 

425,823 

December  31,  1896  

7,898 

613,991 

December  31,  1897  

8,711 

756,438 

December  31,  1898  

9,990 

891,614 

December  31,  1899  

11,015 

1,102,121 

December  31,  1900  

16,349 

T,  473,807 

December  31,  1901  

28,036 

1,928,090 

December  31,  1902  

33^9! 

2,343,721 

December  31,  1903  

40,230 

2,851,463 

December  31,  1904  

46,961 

3,320,310 

December  31,  1905  

56,572 

3,878,666 

December  31,  1906  

68,990 

4,923,986 

December  31,  1907  

80,809 

5,856,166 

December  31,  1908  

90,283 

6,729,926 

December  31,  1909  

104,449 

7,42^649 

December  31,  1910  

121,853 

8,584,725 

December  31,  1911  

144,018 

9,922,562 

December  31,  1912  

169,075 

11,886,692 

December  31,  1913  

193,658 

12,212,768 

December  31,  1914  

212,818 

13,283,437 

December  31,  1915  

232,506 

14,088,169 

December  31,  1916  

*222,838 

I5,°55,358 

December  31,  1917  

236,571 

16,079,257 

December  31,  1918  

245,855 

16,954,478 

December  31,  1919  

267,676 

17,321,988 

December  31,  1920  

296,165 

19,049,237 

December  31,  1921  

325,842 

20,714,628 

June  30,  1922      

343,410 

21,528,563 

*  Due  to  installing  master  meters. 

170 


STATISTICAL  DATA 

Mileage  of  the  Two- Wire  System  in  the  First 

District,  Showing  How  it  was  Superseded 

by  the  Three- Wire  System 

December  31,  1889 :5-24  Miles 

December  31,  1890 13- 16  Miles 

December  31,  1891 8.81  Miles 

December  31,  1892 6.37  Miles 

December  31,  1893 3.  2765  Miles 

December  31,  1895 0.24  Miles 

December  31,  1898 0.15  Miles 

From  Annual  Reports  of  the  Edison  Electric 
Illuminating  Company 

Most  Northern  Point  of  the  Edison  System 
at  Various  Stages  of  Development 

1883 Nassau  Street  near  Park  Row 

1889 Fifty-ninth  Street 

1890 Fifty-ninth  Street 

1891 Sixty-sixth  Street 

1892 Seventy-ninth  Street 

1893 Seventy-ninth  Street 

1897 Eighty-seventh  Street 

1898 Nmty-fifth  Street 

1902 The  Bronx 

1912 Edison  Service  in  practically  every  street  of 

Manhattan  and  the  Bronx 


171 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 
Dates  of  Opening  Various  Stations 

1882 255-257  Pearl  Street 

1886 60  Liberty  Street  (annex  station) 

1888 Thirty-ninth  Street — West 

!888 Twenty-sixth  Street 

1890 Produce  Exchange  Annex 

1891 Duane  Street 

1893 Fifty-third  Street 

1895 Twelfth  Street 

1896 Bowling  Green 

1898 Eighty-third  Street 

1898 Crosby  Street 

1899 Gold  Street 

1899 One  Hundred  and  Twenty-first  Street 

1900 Vandam  Street 

1900 Horatio  Street 

1900 Eighty-fourth  Street 

1900 One  Hundred  and  Twenty-third  Street 

1900 One  Hundred  and  Fortieth  Street 

1900 Riverdale 

1901 Waterside  No  i 

1903 Clinton  Street 

1903 Twenty-seventh  Street — West 

1904 One  Hundred  and  Seventh  Street 

1906 Water  Street 

1906 Waterside  No  2 

1906 Thirty-ninth  Street — East 

1906 Sixtieth  Street 

1907 Sixteenth  Street 

1907 Sixty-fourth  Street 

1909 Fordham 

1910 Gimbel  Building 

1910 Blackwell's  Island 

1910 Forty-first  Street — West 

1913 Twenty-sixth  Street — East  Hunts  Point 

1916 One  Hundred  and  Third  Street 

1920 Sixth  Street 

1920 Bowery 

1921 Cedar  Street 

1921 Seventy-third  Street 

1921 In  wood  Avenue 

1921 Greene  Street 


172 


STATISTICAL  DATA 

The  Capacity  in  Kilowatts  of  the  Generating  Stations 
for  the  Years  1904  to  1922  : 

Year  Capacity 

Jan.  ist  Kilowatt 

1904  .  52,100 

1905 60,600 

1906 70,400 

1907 100,600 

1908 149,300 

1909  163,000 

I910 i73>100 

I911 165,950 

1912 216,950 

i9T3 264,500 

1914 246,000 

1915 296,000 

1916 296,000 

1917 296,000 

1918 296,000 

1919 296,000 

1920 338,000 

1921 356,000 

1922 356,000 

The  decrease  in  the  year  1911  was  due  to  the  replacing 
of  old  machines  with  larger  machines  in  Waterside  No  i  and 
the  decrease  in  the  year  1914  was  due  to  the  replacing  of 
small  machines  with  larger  machines  in  Waterside  No  2. 


FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 


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FORTY  YEARS  OF  EDISON  SERVICE 

Mileage,  by  Years,  of  the  Distribution  and  Trans 
mission  Systems  of  The  New  York 
Edison  Company 


Existing 

Distribution  System 

Trans- 

Total 

In- 

Dec. 31 

mission 
System 

Miles 

crease 

Mains 

Feeders 

1881     .      .      . 

|  No  Record 

No  Record 

No  Record 

1882     .      .      . 

9.  co 

4.00 

13.  50 

1883     .      .      . 

y  j 
\  No  Record 

No  Record 

No  Record 

1884     .      .      . 

i  No  Record 

No  Record 

No  Record 

1885     .      .      . 

'  No  Record 

No  Record 

No  Record 

1886     .      .      . 

;  No  Record 

No  Record 

No  Record 

1887     .      .      . 

29.45 

20.56 

50.01  (?) 

36-  51 

1888     .      .      . 

32.29 

21.93 

54-22  (?) 

4.21 

1889     .      .      . 

41.82 

25.60 

67.42 

13.20 

1890     .      .      . 

71.97 

38.69 

no.  66 

43-24 

1891     . 

94.56 

46.87 

141-43 

3°-77 

1892     .      .      . 

114.25 

58-23 

172.48 

31-05 

1893     .      .      . 

122.78 

64.  64 

187.42 

14-94 

1894     .      .      . 

126.42 

65.41 

191.83 

4.41 

1895     .      .      . 

134.16 

68.76 

202.92 

11.09 

1896     .      .      . 

138.66 

70.67 

209.33 

6.41 

1897     .      .      . 

144.64 

77-:5 

221.79 

12.46 

1898     .      .      . 

156.30 

80.  16 

3.26 

239-72 

17-93 

1899     .      .      . 

I79-38 

85.00 

38.34 

302.72 

63.00 

1900     . 

225.64 

98.90 

49-92 

374-46 

7i-74 

1901 

238.60 

108.49 

72.88 

419.97 

45-51 

1902     . 

278.46 

124.15 

84.63 

487-24 

67,27 

1903     .      .      . 

337-85 

3H-I5 

116.66 

768.66 

281.42 

1904     .      .      . 

384-97 

344-72 

144.76 

874.45 

105.79 

1905     .      .      . 

436.43 

398-32 

168.39 

1003.14 

128.69 

1906 

521.70 

455-32 

198.31 

"75-33 

172.19 

1907     .      .      . 

557.05 

492  .  4o 

219.87 

1269.32 

93-99 

1908     .      .      . 

59I-58 

530.95 

246.22 

1368.75 

99-43 

1909     .      .      . 

644.62 

592.87 

294.12 

1531.61 

162.86 

1910 

702.84 

695.85 

343.69 

1742.38 

210.77 

1911 

738.55 

778.88 

385-45 

1902.88 

160.50 

1912     .      .      . 

792.68 

874.27 

436.47 

2103.42 

200.54 

1913     .      .      . 

8  co.  27 

972.89 

465.18 

2288.34 

184.92 

1914     .      .      . 

880.25 

995-  13 

467-34 

2342.72 

54-38 

1915     . 

947-35 

1126.38 

449-98 

2523.71 

180.99 

1916     . 

1001.55 

1158.72 

442.27 

2602.54 

78.83 

1917     .      .      . 

1023.77 

1167.66 

433-42 

2624.85 

22.31 

1918     .      .      . 

1032.35 

1189.88 

434-99 

2657.22 

32-37 

1919     .      .      . 

loco.  72 

1221.43 

432.61 

2704.76 

47-54 

1920     . 

1081.92 

1409.47 

490.99 

2982.38 

277.62 

1921     .      . 

1123.  28 

1467.92 

655.57 

:    3246.77 

264.39 

176 


Index  to  Illustrations 


Index  to  Illustrations 

Thomas  Alva  Edison 1922 Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Portrait  of  Charles  Batchelor   .    .    the  first  photograph  ever 

taken  by  incandescent  electric  lamps 4 

Old  Edison  Lamp  in  Service  for  Twenty  Years       ....        6 
Edison  in  1881 .      .      .        8 

Edison  in  His  Workshop — 1879    •    •    drawn  by  H  Muhrman. 

Harper  s  Weekly 10 

New  Jersey — The  Wizard  of  Electricity   .    .   Thomas  A  Edi- 
son experimenting  with  carbonized  paper  for  his  system 
of  Electric  Light,  at  his  laboratory,  Menlo  Park.  Leslie  s 
Weekly,  1880 ' 12 

Edison's  Electric  Light — The  Generator   .    .    from  sketches 

by  Theo  R  Davis.  Harper  s  Weekly,  1880 14 

The  Pearl  Street  District— "Under  the  Towers"  .  .  from  the 
water-color  painting  by  F  Hopkinson  Smith.  Harper  s 
Weekly,  1882 16 

New  Jersey — The  Wizard  of  Electricity  .  .  Thomas  A  Edi- 
son's system  of  Electric  Illumination.  Leslie's  Weekly, 
1880 20 

The  Electric  Light  in  Houses  .  .  laying  the  tubes  for  wires 
in  the  streets  of  New  York  .  .  drawn  by  W  P  Snyder. 
Harper  s  Weekly,  1882 24 

Edison's  First  District  .  .  the  tall  buildings  which  now  cast 
their  shadows  over  the  district  where  Edison  service  had 
its  beginning  .  .  etching  by  E  Horter 26 

The  World  and  Tribune  Buildings  .  .  Hall  of  Records  at 
right,  Municipal  Building  construction  at  the  left  .  . 
etching  by  E  Horter 32 

179 


INDEX  TO  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

New  York,  about  1880 36 

Bridges  over  Harlem  River   .    .   Harper 's  Weekly ,1882     .      .     40 
Street  Connections  at  Old  Pearl  Street 44 

Primitive   Regulating  Apparatus   used   at   the   Pearl   Street 

Station  in  1882 45 

Battery  of  a  Thousand  Lamps  on  an  upper  floor  at  257  Pearl 

Street 46 

The  Edison  Central  Station  Dynamo  for  1200  sixteen  candle 

power  lamps 47 

Edison's  Steam  Dynamo — Menlo  Park 48 

Edison's  Large  Dynamo  Electric  Generator,  1882    ....     49 
Broad  and  Wall  Streets,  1882 50 

Bronze  Tablet  Marking  the  Site  of  the  First  Edison  Central 
Station  at  255-257  Pearl  Street  .  .  this  tablet  was 
erected  in  1917  by  The  American  Scenic  &  Historical 
Society  and  The  New  York  Edison  Company  .  .  .  <2 

The  Dynamo  Room   .    .   first  Edison  electric  lighting  station 

in  New  York   .    .    Scientific  American^  August  26,  1882  .54 

The  Last  of  Old  Pearl  Street 56 

Broadway,  North  from  Cortlandt  Street  in  the  Early  Eighties   60 

Thomas  A  Edison  in  His  Laboratory  .  .  from  an  instantane- 
ous photograph  taken  specially  for  Frank  Leslie's  Illus- 
trated Newspaper 64 

Old  Edison  Chemical  Meter    .  .      .      68 

**  •* 

Christmas  Shopping  Before  the  Automobile    .    .    drawn  by 

WHShelton.  Harper  s  Weekly,  1882 '.76 

Broadway  and  Fulton  Street,  1886 80 

Coaling  Apparatus  and  Barges  at  the  Waterside  Stations   .    . 

etching  by  E  Horter 84 

1 80 


INDEX  TO  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"The  Heavenly  Twins"   .    .    Duane  Street  station     ...      86 
Thomas  A  Edison  Visiting  Waterside  Station — 1902    ...     90 

Heating  New  York  by  Steam     .     .     drawn  by  VV  P  Snyder. 

Harper 's  Weekly,  1882 96 

The  Edison  Underground  System  in  1883 98 

The  Waterside  Stations  of  The  New  York  Edison  Company 
which  extend  from  First  Avenue  to  East  River  and  from 
Thirty-eighth  to  Fortieth  Streets 102 

The  Stacks  of  the  Waterside  Stations,  Thirty-eighth  to  For- 
tieth Streets,  on  the  East  River  .  .  etching  by  E  Horter  108 

Brooklyn  Bridge   .    .    etching  by  E  Horter 122 

The  New  York  Skyscraper  is  a  Building  Closely  Associated 
with  the  Development  of  Electrical  Service  .  .  etching 
by  E  Horter 134 

Past   and   Present — the   Town  crier   and    the   Newsboy  .    . 

drawn  by  P  Frenzeny.  Harpers  Weekly >  1882.      .      .      .    144 

Some  of  the  Recent  Advertising  Material  .  .  including  a  let- 
terhead, a  label,  place  cards,  a  calendar,  a  blotter,  a  price 
card,  mailing  cards,  a  folder  and  a  booklet  .  .  .  .  148 

Territorial  Map 150 

The  First  Use  of  the  Edison  Man  in  Advertising  .     .    Used  as  a 

blotter. — The  Cover  Designs  of  Two  Edison  Periodicals     .    152 

Edison  Electric  Illuminating  Co  StafT  Council — 1896  .      .      .160 


181 


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